
Book XjI?)^- 

\307 






SIR WALTER SCOTT 

AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 



AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 



BY 

MARGARET BALL 



Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for 

THE Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty 

of Philosophy, Columbia University 



NEW YORK 
1907 






Press of 

The New era printing company 

Lancaster, pa. 



PREFACE 

The lack of any adequate discussion of Scott's critical work 
is a sufficient reason for the undertaking of this study, the 
subject of which was suggested to me more than three years 
ago by Professor Trent of Columbia University. We still 
use critical essays and monumental editions prepared by the 
author of the Waverley novels, but the criticism has been so 
overshadowed by the romances that its importance is scarcely 
recognized. It is valuable in itself, as well as in the oppor- 
tunity it offers of considering the relation of the critical to the 
creative mood, an especially interesting problem when it is 
presented concretely in the work of a great writer. 

No complete bibliography of Scott's writings has been pub- 
lished, and perhaps none is possible in the case of an author 
who wrote so much anonymously. The present attempt in- 
cludes some at least of the books and articles commonly left 
unnoticed, which are chiefly of a critical or scholarly character. 

I am glad to record my gratitude to Professor William 
Allan Neilson, now of Harvard University, and to Professors 
A. H. Thorndike, W. W. Lawrence, G. P. Krapp, and J. E. 
Spingarn, of Columbia, for suggestions in connection with 
various parts of the work. From the beginning Professor 
Trent has helped me constantly by his advice as well as by the 
inspiration of his scholarship, and my debt to him is one 
which can be understood only by the many students who have 
known his kindness. 

Mount Holyoke College, 
June, 1907. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I. 
Introduction : An Outline of Scott's Literary Career 1 

CHAPTER n. 
Scott's Qualifications as Critic 9 

CHAPTER HI. 

Scott's Work as Student and Editor in the Field of Literary 
History 

1. The Mediaeval Period 

(a) Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 17 

(&) Studies in the Romances 32 

(c) Other Studies in Mediaeval Literature 40 

2. The Drama 46 

3. The Seventeenth Century : Dryden 59 

4. The Eighteenth Century 

(a) Swift 65 

(b) The Somers Tracts 70 

(O The Lives of the Novelists, and Comments on other 

Eighteenth Century Writers 72 

CHAPTER IV. 
Scott's Criticism of His Contemporaries 81 

CHAPTER V. 
Scott as a Critic of His Own Work 108 

CHAPTER VL 
Scott's Position as Critic I34 

APPENDICES 

I. Bibliography of Scott, Annotated 147 

II. List of Books Quoted 174 

Index I79 



A DATED LIST OF SCOTT'S BOOKS, ASIDE FROM 
THE POEMS AND NOVELS, AND OF THE PRIN- 
CIPAL WORKS WHICH HE EDITED (PERI- 
ODICAL CRITICISM NOT INCLUDED). 

1802-3 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (edited). 

1804 Sir Tristrem (edited). 

1806 Original Memoirs written during- the Great Civil 

War; the Life of Sir H. Slingsby, and Memoirs 

of Capt. Hodgson (edited). 
1808 Memoirs of Capt. Carleton (edited). 
1808 The Works of John Dryden (edited). 
1808 Memoirs of Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, and 

Fragmenta Regalia (edited). 

1808 Oueenhoo Hall, a Romance; and Ancient Times, a 

Drama (edited). 

1809 The State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler 

(edited). 
1809-15 The Somers Tracts (edited). 
181 1 Memoirs of the Court of Charles II, by Count Gram- 

mont (edited). 
181 1 Secret History of the Court of James the First 

(edited). 

1813 Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I, by Sir Philip 

Warwick (edited). 

1814 The Works of Jonathan Swift (edited). 

1 814-17 The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland. 
1816 Paul's Letters, 

1818 Essay on Chivalry. 

18 19 Essay on the Drama. 

1819-26 Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of 
Scotland. 

1820 Trivial Poems and Triolets by Patrick Carey (edited). 

1821 Northern Memoirs, calculated for the Meridian of 

Scotland; and the Contemplative and Practical 
Angler (edited). 



1821-24 The Novelists' Library (edited). 

1822 Chronological Notes of Scottish Affairs from 1680 

till 1701 (edited). 
1822 Military Memoirs of the Great Civil War (edited). 
1824 Essay on Romance. 

1826 Letters of Malachi Malagrowther on the Currency. 

1827 The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte. 

1828 Tales of a Grandfather, first series. 
1828 Religious Discourses, by a Layman. 

1828 Proceedings in the Court-martial held upon John, 

Master of Sinclair, etc. (edited). 

1829 Memorials of George Bannatyne (edited). 

1829 Tales of a Grandfather, second series. 

1829-32 The "Opus Magnum" (Novels, Tales, and Ro- 
mances, with Introductions and Notes by the 
Author). 

1830 Tales of a Grandfather, third series. 
1830 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. 

1830 History of Scotland. 

183 1 Tales of a Grandfather, fourth series. 
1831 Trial of Duncan Terig, etc. (edited). 



1890 The Journal of Sir Walter Scott. 
1894 Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott. 



CHAPTER I 
Introduction 

Importance of a study of Scott's critic^ and scholarly work — Con- 
nection between his creative work andJ||is criticism — Chronological 
view of his literary career. '^ 

Scott's critical work has become inconspicuous because of 
his predominant fame as an imaginative v^riter; but what it 
loses on this account it perhaps gains in the special interest 
attaching to criticism formulated by a great creative artist. 
One phase of his work is emphasized and explained by 
the other, and we cannot afford to ignore his criticism if we 
attempt fairly to comprehend his genius as a poet and novelist. 
The fact that he is the subject of one of the noblest biographies 
in our language only increases our obligation to become ac- 
quainted with his own presentation of his artistic principles. 

But though criticism by so great and voluminous a writer 
is valuable mainly because of the important relation it bears 
to his other work, and because of the authority it derives from 
this relation, Scott's scholarly and critical writings are indi- 
vidual enough in quality and large enough in extent to demand 
consideration on their own merits. Yet this part of his achieve- 
ment has received very little attention from biographers and 
critics. Lockhart's book is indeed full of materials, and con- 
tains also some suggestive comment on the facts presented; 
but as the passing of time has made an estimation of Scott's 
power more safe, students have lost interest in his work as a 
Clitic, and recent writers have devoted little attention to this 
aspect of the great man of letters.^ 

1 Mr. Hutton's Life of Scott, in the English Men of Letters series, con- 
tains no chapter nor any extended passage on Scott's critical and scholarly 
work, though there is a chapter on " Scott's Morality and Religion," and 
one on " Scott as a Politician." This, like the other short biographies of 
Scott, is professedly a compilation, so far as its facts are concerned, from 
Lockhart's book. The Lives of Scott by Gilfillan and by Mackenzie, pub- 
lished about the time of the Scott centenary in 1871, are longer than Hut- 
1 1 



is SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

The present study is an attempt to show the scope and 
quality of Scott's critical writings, and of such works, not 
exclusively or mainly critical, as exhibit the range of his schol- 
arship. For it is impossible to treat his criticism without dis- 
cussing his scholarship ; since, lightly as he carried it, this was 
of consequence in itself and in its influence on all that he did. 
The materials for analysis are abundant; and by rearrange- 
ment and special study they may be made to contribute both 
to the history of criticism and to our comprehension of the 
power of a great writer. In considering him from this point 
of view we are bound to remember the connection between 
the different parts of his vocation. In him, more than in most 
men of letters, the critic resembled the creative writer, and 
though the critical temperament seems to show itself but rarely 
in his romances, we find that the characteristic absence of pre- 
cise and conscious art is itself in harmony with his critical creed. 

The relation between the different parts of Scott's literary 
work is exemplified by the subjects he treated, for as a critic 
he touched many portions of the field, which in his capacity of 
poet and novelist he occupied in a different way. He was a 
historical critic no less than a historical romancer. A larger 
proportion of his criticism concerns itself with the eighteenth 
century, perhaps, than of his fiction,^ and he often wrote re- 
ton's, but contain no more extended reference to the critical writings. 
Mackenzie's book out of nearly five hundred pages gives only one to a 
discussion of the edition of Dryden, and half a page to an account of the 
establishment of the Quarterly Review. Gilfillan characterizes the critical 
work in almost as short a space, but with a good deal of judgment. The 
German biography of Scott contemporary with these, by Dr. Felix Eberty, 
is concerned with the man rather than his works. Of later Lives of Scott, 
Prof. Saintsbury's gives, in proportion to its length, more space than any 
other to Scott's critical work, but the book has only a hundred and fifty- 
five pages in all. Another recent biographer, Mr. W. H. Hudson, says of 
Scott's editorial and critical work, " these exertions, though they call for 
passing record, occupy a minor place in his story " ; and he gives them 
only " passing record." Mr. Andrew Lang's still more recent and briefer 
Sir Walter Scott devotes only a few lines here and there to comment on 
Scott as a critic, and contains hardly even a reference to the little-known 
volumes that he edited. 

1 Ten of Scott's twenty-seven novels (counting the first series of Chron- 
icles of the Canongate as one) have scenes laid in the eighteenth century. 
They are as follows, arranged approximately in the order of their periods : 



INTRODUCTION 3 

views of contemporary literature, but on the whole the litera- 
ture with which he dealt critically was representative of those 
periods of time which he chose to portray in novel and poem. 
This evidently implies great breadth of scope. Yet Scott's 
vivid sense of the past had its bounds, as Professor Masson 
pointed out.^ It was the " Gothic " past that he venerated. 
The field of his studies, chronologically considered, included 
the period between his own time and the crusades; and geo- 
graphically, was in general confined to England and Scotland, 
with comparatively rare excursions abroad. When, in his novels, 
he carried his Scottish or English heroes out of Britain into 
foreign countries, he was apt to bestow upon them not only a 
special endowment of British feeling, but also a portion of 
that interest in their native literature which marked the taste 
of their creator. We find that the personages in his books are 
often distinguished by that love of stirring poetry, particularly 
of popular and national poetry, which was a dominant trait in 
Scott's whole literary career. 

With Scotland and with popular poetry any discussion of 
Sir Walter properly begins. The love of Scottish minstrelsy 
first awakened his literary sense, and the stimulus supplied by 
ballads and romances never lost its force. We may say that 
the little volumes of ballad chap-books which he collected and 
bound up before he was a dozen years old suggested the future 
editor, as the long poem on the Conquest of Grenada, which he 
is said to have written and burned when he was fifteen, fore- 
shadowed the poet and romancer. 

Yet Scott's career as an author began rather late. He pub- 
lished a few translations when he was twenty-five years old, 
but his first notable work, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 
did not appear until 1802-3, when he was over thirty. This 
book, the outgrowth of his early interest in ballads and his own 
attempts at versifying, exhibited both his editorial and his 
creative powers. It led up to the publication of two important 

The Bride of Lammermoor, The Pirate, The Black Dwarf, Rob Roy, The 
Heart of Midlothian, Waverley, Guy Mannering, Redgauntlet, Chronicles of 
the Canongate (First series). The Antiquary. The long poems all found 
their setting in earlier periods. 

^British Novelists and their Styles, pp. 167-8. 



4 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

volumes which contained material originally intended to form 
part of the Minstrelsy, but which outgrew that work. These 
were the edition of the old metrical romance Sir Tristrem, which 
showed Scott as a scholar, and the Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
the first of Scott's own metrical romances. So far his literary- 
achievement was all of one kind, or of two or three kinds 
closely related. In this first period of his literary life, perhaps 
even more than later, his editorial impulse, his scholarly activ- 
ity, was closely connected with the inspiration for original 
writing. The Lay of the Last Minstrel was the climax of this 
series of enterprises. 

With the publication of the Minstrelsy, Scott of course 
became known as a literary antiquary. He was naturally called 
upon for help when the Edinburgh Review was started a few 
weeks afterwards, especially as Jeffrey, who soon became the 
editor, had long been his friend. The articles that he wrote 
during 1803 and 1804 were of a sort that most evidently con- 
nected itself with the work he had been doing: reviews, for 
example, of Southey's Anmdis de Gaul, and of Ellis's Early 
English Poetry. During 1805-6 the range of his reviewing 
became wider and he included some modern books, especially 
two or three which offered opportunity for good fun-making. 
About 1806, however, his aversion to the political principles 
which dominated the Edinburgh Review became so strong that 
he refused to continue as a contributor, and only once, years 
later, did he again write an article for that periodical. 

In the same year, 1806, Scott supplied with editorial appa- 
ratus and issued anonymously Original Memoirs Written 
during the Great Civil War, the first of what proved to be a 
long list of publications having historical interest, sometimes 
reprints, sometimes original editions from old manuscripts, to 
which he contributed a greater or less amount of material in 
the shape of introductions and notes. These were undertaken 
in a few cases for money, in others simply because they struck 
him as interesting and useful labors. It is easy to trace the 
relation of this to his other work, particularly to the novels. 
He once wrote to a friend, " The editing a new edition of 
Somers's Tracts some years ago made me wonderfully well 



INTRODUCTION D 

acquainted with the little traits which marked parties and char- 
acters in the seventeenth century, and the embodying them is 
really an amusing task."^ Among the works which he edited 
in this way the number of historical memoirs is noticeable. 
After the volume that has been mentioned as the first, he pre- 
pared another book of Memoirs of the Great Civil War; and 
we find in the list a Secret History of the Court of James I., 
Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I., Count Grammont's 
Memoirs of the Court of Charles II., A History of Queen 
Elizabeth's Favourites, etc. Such books as these, besides fur- 
nishing material for his novels, led Scott to acquire a mass of 
information that enabled him to perform with great facility 
and with admirable results whatever editorial work he might 
choose to undertake. 

These labors Scott always considered as trifles to be dis- 
patched in the odd moments of his time, but the great edition 
of Dryden's Complete Works, which he began to prepare soon 
after the Minstrelsy appeared, was more important. This, 
next to the Minstrelsy, was probably the most notable of all 
Scott's editorial enterprises. It was published in eighteen 
volumes in 1808, the year in which Marmion also appeared. 
When the poet was reproached by one of his friends for not 
working more steadily at his vocation, he replied, " The public, 
with many other properties of spoiled children, has all their 
eagerness after novelty, and were I to dedicate my time en- 
tirely to poetry they would soon tire of me. I must therefore, 
I fear, continue to edit a little."^ His interest in scholarly 
pursuits appears even in his first attempt at writing prose 
fiction, since Joseph Strutt's unfinished romance, Queenhoo 
Hall, for which Scott wrote a conclusion, is of consequence 
only on account of the antiquarian learning which it exhibits. 

Having become seriously alarmed over the political influence 
of the Edinburgh Reviezv, Scott was active in forwarding plans 
for starting a strong rival periodical in London, and 1809 saw 
the establishment of the Quarterly Review. By that time he 
had done a considerable amount of work in practically every 

^ Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 9. 
^Ibid., Vol. I, p. 194. 



6 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

kind except the novel, and he was recognized as a most efficient 
assistant and adviser in any such enterprise as the promoters 
of the Quarterly were undertaking. Moreover, his own writ- 
ings were prominent among the books which suppHed material 
for the reviewer. He worked hard for the first volume. But 
after that year he wrote little for the Quarterly until 1818, and 
again little until after Lockhart became editor in 1825. From 
that time until 1831 he was an occasional contributor. 

1814 was the year of Waverley. Before that the poems had 
been appearing in rapid succession, and Scott had been busy 
with the Works of Swift, which came out also in 1814. The 
thirteen volumes of the edition of Somers' Tracts, already 
mentioned, and several smaller books, bore further witness to 
his editorial energy. The last of the long poems was published 
in 1 81 5, about the same time with Guy Mannering, the second 
novel, and after that the novels continued to appear with that 
rapidity which constitutes one of the chief facts of Scott's 
literary career. For a few years after this period he did com- 
paratively little in the way of editorial work, but his odd mo- 
ments were occupied in writing about history, travels, and 
antiquities.^ 

In 1820 Scott wrote the Lives of the Novelists, which ap- 
peared the next year in Ballantyne's Novelists' Library. By 
this time he had begun, with Ivanhoe, to strike out from the 
Scottish field in which all his first novels had been placed. 
The martial pomp prominent in this novel reflects the eager 
interest with which he was at that time following his son's 
opening career in the army; just as Marmion, written by the 
young quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Horse, also 
expresses the military ardor which was so natural to Scott, and 
which reminds us of his remark that in those days a regiment 
of dragoons was tramping through his head day and night. 
Probably we might trace many a reason for his literary pre- 
occupations at special times besides those that he has himself 
commented upon. In the case of the critical work, however, 

^ See particularly Paul's Letters ; Provincial Antiquities ; and the Histories 
of the years 1814 and 181 5, each a respectable volume, written for the 
Edinburgh Annual Register. 



INTRODUCTION 7 

the matter was usually determined for him by circumstances 
of a much less intimate sort, such as the appeal of an editor or 
the appearance of a book which excited his special interest. 

When Scott was obliged to make as much money as possible 
he wrote novels and histories rather than criticism. His Life 
of Napoleon Buonaparte, which appeared in nine volumes in 
1827, enabled him to make the first large payment on the debts 
that had fallen upon him in the financial crash of the preceding 
year, and the Talcs of a Grandfather were among the most 
successful of his later books. His critical biographies and 
many of his other essays were brought together for the first 
time in 1827, and issued under the title of Miscellaneous Prose 
Works. The world of books was making his life weary with 
its importunate demands in those years when he was writing 
to pay his debts, and it is pleasant to see that some of his later 
reviews discussed matters that were not less dear to his heart 
because they were not literary. The articles on fishing, on 
ornamental gardening, on planting waste lands, remind us of 
the observation he once made, that his oaks would outlast his 
laurels. 

By this time the " Author of Waverley " was no longer the 
'* unknown." His business complications compelled him to 
give his name to the novels, and with the loss of a certain kind 
of privacy he gained the freedom of which later he made such 
fortunate use in annotating his own works. From the begin- 
ning of 1828 until the end of his life in 1832, Scott was en- 
gaged, in the intervals of other occupations, in writing these 
introductions and notes for his novels, for an edition which he 
always called the Opus Magnum. This was a pleasant task, 
charmingly done. Indeed we may call it the last of those 
great editorial labors by which Scott's fame might live unsup- 
ported by anything else. First came the Minstrelsy of the 
Scottish Border, then the editions of Dryden and Swift. Next 
we may count the Lives of the Novelists, even in the frag- 
mentary state in which the failure of the Novelists' Library 
left them ; and finally the Opus Magnum. When, in addition, 
we remember the mass of his critical work written for period- 
icals, and the number of minor volumes he edited, it becomes 



8 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

evident that a study of Scott which disregards this part of his 
work can present only a one-sided view of his achievement. 
And the quaUties of his abundant criticism, especially its large 
fresh sanity, seem to make it worthy of closer analysis than 
it usually receives, not only because it helps to reveal Scott's 
genius, but also on account of the historical and ethical impor- 
tance which always attaches to the ideals, literary and other, 
of a noble man and a great writer. 



CHAPTER II 

Scott's Qualifications as Critic 

Wide reading Scott's first qualification — Scott the antiquary — Char- 
acter of his interest in history — His imagination — His knowledge of 
practical affairs — Common-sense in criticism— Cheerfulness, good- 
humor, and optimism — General aspect of Scott's critical work. 

Wide and appreciative reading was Scott's first qualification 
for critical work. A memory that retained an incredible 
amount of what he read was the second. One of the severest 
censures he ever expressed was in regard to Godwin, who, he 
thought, undertook to do scholarly work without adequate 
equipment. " We would advise him," Scott said in his review 
of Godwin's Life of Chancer, "in future to read before he 
writes, and not merely while he is writing." Scott himself had 
accumulated a store of literary materials, and he used them 
according to the dictates of a temperament which had vivid 
interests on many sides. 

We may distinguish three points of view which were habitual 
to Scott, and which determined the direction of his creative 
work, as well as the tone of his criticism. These were— as all 
the world knows— the historical, the romantic, the practical. 

He was, as he often chose to call himself, an antiquary; he 
felt the appeal of all that was old and curious. But he was 
much more than that. The typical antiquary has his mind so 
thoroughly devoted to the past that the present seems remote 
to him. The sheer intellectual capacity of such a man as Scott 
might be enough to save him from such a limitation, for he 
could give to the past as much attention as an ordinary man 
could muster, and still have interest for contemporary affairs ; 
but his capacity was not all that saved Scott. He viewed the 
past always as filled with living men, whose chief occupation 
was to think and feel rather than to provide towers and armor 

9 



10 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

for the delectation of future antiquaries.^ A sympathetic stu- 
dent of his work has said, " There is . , . throughout the 
poetry of this author, even when he leads us to the remotest 
wildernesses and the most desolate monuments of antiquity, a 
constant reference to the feelings of man in his social condi- 
tion." - The past, to the author of Kenilworth, was only the 
far end of the present, and he believed that the most useful 
result of the study of history is a comprehension of the real 
quality of one's own period and a wisdom in the conduct of 
present day affairs.^ 

The favorite pursuits of Scott's youth indicate that his char- 
acteristic taste showed itself early; indeed it is said that he 
retained his boyish traits more completely than most people do. 
We can trace much of his love of the past to the family 
traditions which made the adventurous life of his ancestors 
vividly real to him. The annals of the Scotts were his earliest 
study, and he developed such an affection for his freebooting 
grandsires that in his manhood he confessed to an unconquer- 
able liking for the robbers and captains of banditti of his 
romances, characters who could not be prevented from usurp- 
ing the place of the heroes. " I was always a willing listener 
to tales of broil and battle and hubbub of every kind," he wrote 
in later life, " and now I look back upon it, I think what a 
godsend I must have been while a boy to the old Trojans of 
1745, nay 1715, who used to frequent my father's house, and 
who knew as little as I did for what market I was laying up 
the raw materials of their oft-told tales."* What attracted 
him in his boyhood, and what continued to attract him, was 
the picturesque incident, the color of the past, the mere look 

^ Ruskin's remark that " The excellence of Scott's work is precisely in 
proportion to the degree in which it is sketched from present nature," 
should not necessarily lead on to the condemnation which follows : " He does 
not see how anything is to be got out of the past but confusion, old iron 
on drawing-room chairs, and serious inconvenience to Dr. Heavysterne." 
{Modern Painters, Part IV, ch. i6, § 32.) 

^Letters to Richard Heber, etc. (by J. L. Adolphus), pp. 136-137. 

^ Mr. Herford distinguishes two lines of romantic sentiment — " the one 
pursuing the image of the past as a refuge from reality, the other as a 
portion of it : the medisevalism of Tieck and the mediaevalism of Scott." 
The Age of Wordsworth, Introduction, p. xxiv, note. 

* Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, p. 249. 



HIS QUALIFICATIONS AS CRITIC 11 

of its varied activity. The philosophy of history was grad- 
ually revealed to him, however, and his generalizing faculty 
found congenial employment in tracing out the relation of men 
to movements, of national impulses to world history. But 
however much he might exercise his analytical powers, history 
was never abstract to him, nor did it require an effort for him 
to conjure up scenes of the past. An acquaintance with the 
stores of early literature served to give him the spirit of remote 
times as well as to feed his literary tastes. On this side he had 
an ample equipment for critical work, conditioned, of course, 
by the other qualities of his mind, which determined how the 
equipment should be used. 

That Scott was not a dull digger in heaps of ancient lore 
was owing to his imaginative power, — the second of the quali- 
ties which we have distinguished as dominating his literary 
temperament. " I can see as many castles in the clouds as any 
man," he testified.^ A recent writer has said that Scott had 
more than any other man that ever lived a sense of the roman- 
tic, and adds that his was that true romance which " lies not 
upon the outside of life, but absolutely in the centre of it."^ 
The situations and the very objects that he described have the 
power of stirring the romantic spirit in his readers because he 
was alive to the glamour surrounding anything which has for 
generations been connected with human thoughts and emotions. 
The subjectivity which was so prominent an element in the 
romanticism of Shelley, Keats, and Byron, does not appear in 
Scott's work. Nor was his sense of the mystery of things so 
subtle as that of Coleridge. But Scott, rather than Coleridge, 
was the interpreter to his age of the romantic spirit, for the 
ordinary person likes his wonders so tangible that he may know 
definitely the point at which they impinge upon his conscious- 
ness. In Scott's work the point of contact is made clear: the 
author brings his atmosphere not from another world but from 
the past, and with all its strangeness it has no unearthly quality. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 333; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 81. The edition of Lock- 
hart's Life of Scott to which reference is made throughout this study is 
that in five volumes, published by Macmillan & Co. in the " Library of 
English Classics." « Chesterton, Varied Types, pp. 161-2. 



12 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

In general the romance of his nature is rather taken for 
granted than insisted on, for there are the poems and the novels 
to bear witness to that side of his temperament; and the sur- 
prising thing is that such an author was a business man, a large 
landowner, an industrious lawyer/ 

Scott's imaginative sense, which clothed in fine fancies any 
incident or scene presented, however nakedly, to his view, 
accounts in part for his notorious tendency to overrate the 
work of other writers, especially those who wrote stories in any 
form. This explanation was hinted at by Sir Walter himself, 
and formulated by Lockhart; it seems a fairly reasonable way 
of accounting for a trait that at first appears to indicate only 
a foolish excess of good-nature. This rich and active imagina- 
tion, which Scott brought to bear on everything he read, per- 
haps explains also his habit of paying little attention to care- 
fully worked out details, and of laying almost exclusive em- 
phasis upon main outlines. When he was writing his Life of 
Napoleon, he said in his Journal: " Better a superficial book 
which brings well and strikingly together the known and 
acknowledged facts, than a dull boring narrative, pausing to 
see further into a mill-stone at every moment than the nature 
of the mill-stone admits. "^ Probably his high gift of imagi- 
nation made him a little impatient with the remoter reaches of 
the analytic faculties. Any sustained exercise of the pure rea- 
son was outside his province, reasonable as he was in every- 
day affairs. He preferred to consider facts, and to theorize 
only so far as was necessary to establish comfortable relations 
between the facts, — never to the extent of trying to look into 

^ The fact that Scott was a Clerk of the Court of Sessions is remem- 
bered less frequently than the fact that he had business complications. 
But this employment of his, which could be undertaken only by a lawyer, 
occupied a large proportion of his time during twenty-four years. He once 
wrote, " I cannot work well after I have had four or five hours of the 
court, for though the business is trifling, yet it requires constant attention, 
which is at length exhausting." {Constable's Correspondence, Vol. Ill, p. 
195.) Again he wrote, " I saw it reported that Joseph Hume said I com- 
posed novels at the clerk's table ; but Joseph Hume said what neither was 
nor could be correct, as any one who either knew what belonged to com- 
posing novels, or acting as clerk to a court of justice, would easily have 
discovered." {Memoirs of Sir William Knighton, p. 252.) 

2 Journal, Vol. I, p. 60 ; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 390. 



HIS QUALIFICATIONS AS CRITIC 13 

the center of a mill-stone. It was not unusual for him to make 
very acute observations in the spheres of ethics, economics, and 
psychology, and to use them in explaining any situation which 
might seem to require their assistance ; but these remarks were 
brief and incidental, and bore a very definite relation to the 
concrete ideas they were meant to illustrate. 

Scott was a business man as well as an antiquary and a poet. 
Mr. Palgrave thought Lockhart went too far in creating the 
impression that Scott could detach his mind from the world 
of imagination and apply its full force to practical affairs. ^ 
Yet the oversight of lands and accounts and of all ordinary 
matters was so congenial to him, and his practical activities 
were on the whole conducted with so much spirit and capa- 
bility, that after emphasizing his preoccupation with the poetic 
aspects of the life of his ancestors, we must turn immediately 
about and lay stress upon his keen judgment in everyday 
affairs. To a school-boy poet he once wrote : " I would . . . 
caution you against an enthusiasm which, while it argues an 
excellent disposition and a feeling heart, requires to be watched 
and restrained, though not repressed. It is apt, if too much 
indulged, to engender a fastidious contempt for the ordinary 
business of the world, and gradually to render us unfit for the 
exercise of the useful and domestic virtues which depend 
greatly upon our not exalting our feelings above the temper 
of well-ordered and well-educated society."^ He phrased the 
same matter differently when he said : " ' I'd rather be a kitten 
and cry. Mew ! ' than write the best poetry in the world on 
condition of laying aside common-sense in the ordinary trans- 
actions and business of the world. "^ " He thought," said 
Lockhart, " that to spend some fair portion of every day in any 
matter-of-fact occupation is good for the higher faculties them- 
selves in the upshot."* Whether or not we consider this the 
ideal theory of life for a poet, we find it reasonable to suppose 
that a critic will be the better critic if he preserve some balance 
between matter-of-fact occupation and the exercise of his 

^ See the Memoir prefixed to the Globe Edition of Scott's poems. 

^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 217. 

* Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 447. * Ibid., Vol. I, p. 122. 



14 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

higher faculties. Sir Walter's maxim applies well to himself 
at least, and an analysis of his powers as a critic derives some 
light from it. 

The thing that is waiting to be said is of course that his 
criticism is distinguished by common-sense. Whether common- 
sense should really predominate in criticism might perhaps be 
debated; the quality indicates, indeed, not only the excellence 
but also the limitations of his method. For example, Scott was 
rather too much given to accepting popular favor as the test 
of merit in literary work, and though the clamorously eager 
reception of his own books was never able to raise his self- 
esteem to a very high pitch, it seems to have been the only 
thing that induced him to respect his powers in anything like 
an appreciative way.^ His instinct and his judgment agreed 
in urging him to avoid being a man of "mere theory,"^ and 
he sought always to test opinions by practical standards. 

More or less connected with his good sense are other quali- 
ties which also had their effect upon his critical work, — his 
cheerfulness, his sweet temper and human sympathy, his mod- 
esty, his humor, his independence of spirit, and his enthusiastic 
delight in literature. That his cheerfulness was a matter of 
temperament we cannot doubt, but it was also founded on prin- 
ciple. He had remarkable power of self-control.^ His opin- 
ion that it is a man's duty to live a happy life appears rather 
quaintly in the sermonizing with which he felt called upon to 
temper the admiration expressed in his articles on Childe 
Harold, and it is implicit in many of his biographical studies. 
His own amiability of course influenced all his work. Satire 
he considered objectionable, "a woman's fault,"* as he once 
called it ; though he did not feel himself " altogether disquali- 

^ Cooper measured his own success by the same test. At the conclusion 
of the Letter to the Publisher with which The Pioneers originally opened 
he said he should look to his publisher for " the only true account of the 
reception of his book." (Lounsbury's Life of Cooper, pp. 43-4.) 

2 Napoleon, Vol. I, ch. 2. 

^ " He fixed his attention on his employments without the slightest con- 
sideration for his own feelings of whatever kind, either in regard to state 
of health or domestic sorrows." {Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, by R. P. 
Gillies, Vol. Ill, p. 141.) * Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 365. 



HIS QUALIFICATIONS AS CRITIC 15 

fied for it by nature." ^ " I have refrained, as much as human 
frailty will permit, from all satirical composition," ^ he said. 
For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of " serious 
banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical 
slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.^ 
Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar 
conversations about local traditions and superstitions.-* 

He was really optimistic, except on some political questions. 
In his Lives of the Novelists he shows that he thought man- 
ners and morals had improved in the previous hundred years ; 
and none of his reviews exhibits the feeling so common among 
men of letters in all ages, that their own times are intellectually 
degenerate. It is true that he looked back to the days of Blair, 
Hume, Adam Smith, Robertson, and Ferguson, as the " golden 
days of Edinburgh,"^ but those golden days were no farther 
away than his own boyhood, and he had felt the exhilaration 
of the stimulating society which he praised. One of his con- 
temporaries spoke of Scott's own works as throwing " a literary 
splendour over his native city " f and George Ticknor said of 
him, " He is indeed the lord of the ascendant now in Edin- 
burgh, and well deserves to be, for I look upon him to be quite 
as remarkable in intercourse and conversation, as he is in any 
of his writings, even in his novels."''^ But he could hardly be 
expected to perceive the luster surrounding his own person- 
ality, and this one instance of regret for former days counts 
little against the abundant evidence that he thought the world 
was improving. Yet of all his contemporaries he was probably 
the one who looked back at the past with the greatest interest. 
The impression made by the author of Waverley upon the mind 
of a young enthusiast of his own time is too delightful to pass 
over without quotation. " He has no eccentric sympathies or 
antipathies " ; wrote J. L. Adolphus, " no maudlin philanthropy 
or impertinent cynicism ; no nondescript hobby-horse ; and with 

^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 112. 
2 Journal, Vol. I, p. 303 ; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 68. 
^Letters to Heber, p. 69. *Irving's Abbotsford. 

^ Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, Vol. I, p. 282. See also 
Scott's review of the Life of Home; and Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 304. 
^ Cockburn's Memorials, p. 181. "^ Ticknor, Vol. I, p. 280. 



16 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

all his matchless energy and originality of mind, he is content 
to admire popular books, and enjoy popular pleasures; to 
cherish those opinions which experience has sanctioned ; to rev- 
erence those institutions which antiquity has hallowed; and to 
enjoy, admire, cherish, and reverence all these with the same 
plainness, simplicity, and sincerity as our ancestors did of old."^ 
By temperament, then, Scott was enthusiastic over the past 
and cheerful in regard to his own day; he was imaginative, 
practical, genial; and these traits must be taken into account 
in judging his critical writings. These and other qualities 
may be deduced from the most superficial study of his creative 
work. The mere bulk of that work bears witness to two 
things : first that Scott was primarily a creative writer ; again, 
that he was of those who write much rather than minutely. 
It is obvious that to attack details would be easy. And since 
he was only secondarily a critic, it is natural that his critical 
opinions should not have been erected into any system. But 
while they are essentially desultory, they are the ideas of a 
man whose information and enthusiasm extended through a 
wide range of studies ; and they are rendered impressive by the 
abundance, variety, and energy, which mark them as charac- 
teristic of Scott. 

1 Letters to Heher, p. 63 ; Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 496. 



CHAPTER III 

Scott's Work as Student and Editor in the Field of 
Literary History 

the mediaeval period 

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 

Scott's early interest in ballads — Casual origin of the Minstrelsy — 
Importance of the book in Scott's career — Plan of the book — Medi- 
aeval scholarship of Scott's- time — His theory as to the origin of 
ballads and their deterioration — His attitude toward the work of pre- 
vious editors — His method of forming texts — Kinds of changes he 
made — His qualifications for emending old poetry — Modern imitations 
of the ballad included in the Minstrelsy — Remarks on the ballad style 

— Impossibility of a scientific treatment of folk-poetry in Scott's time 

— Real importance of the Minstrelsy. 

We think of the Border Minstrelsy as the first work which 
resuhed from the preparation of Scott's whole youth, between 
the days when he insisted on shouting the hnes of Hardyknute 
into the ears of the irate clergyman making a parish call, and 
the time when he and his equally ardent friends gathered their 
ballads from the lips of old women among the hills. But we 
have seen that the inspiration for his first attempts at writing 
poetry came only indirectly from the ballads of his own coun- 
try. We learn from the introduction to the third part of the 
Minstrelsy that some of the young men of Scott's circle in 
Edinburgh were stimulated by what the novelist, Henry Mac- 
kenzie, told them of the beauties of German literature, to form 
a class for the study of that language. This was when Scott 
was twenty-one, but it was still four years before he found him- 
self writing those translations which mark the sufficiently 
modest beginning of his literary career. His enthusiasm for 
German literature was not at first tempered by any critical dis- 
crimination, if we may judge from the opinions of one or two 
2 17 



18 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

of his friends who labored to point out to him the extravagance 
and false sentiment which he was too ready to admire along 
with the real genius of some of his models.^ Apparently their 
efforts were useful, for in a review written in 1806 we find 
Scott, in a remark on Burger, referring to " the taste for out- 
rageous sensibility, which disgraces most German poetry."^ 
His special interest in the Germans was an early mood which 
seems not to have returned. After the process of translation 
had discovered to him his verse-making faculty, he naturally 
passed on to the writing of original poems, and circumstances 
of a half accidental sort determined that the Scottish ballads 
which he had always loved should absorb his attention for the 
next two or three years. 

The publication of a book of ballads was first suggested by 
Scott as an opportunity for his friend Ballantyne to exhibit his 
skill as a printer and so increase his business. " I have been 
for years collecting old Border ballads," Scott rem.arked, " and 
I think I could with little trouble put together such a selection 
from them as might make a neat little volume to sell for four 
or five shillings." ^ From this casual proposition resulted 
The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, published in three vol- 
umes in 1802-3 and often revised and reissued during the 
editor's lifetime. 

This book and the prefaces to his own novels are likely 
to be thought of first when Scott is spoken of as a critic. 
The connection between the Minstrelsy and the novels has often 
been pointed out, ever since the day of the contemporary who, 
on reading the ballads with their introductions, exclaimed that 
in that book were the elements of a hundred historical ro- 
mances.* The interest of the earlier work is undoubtedly mul- 
tiplied by the associations in the light of which we read it — 
associations connected with the editor's whole experience as an 
author, from the Lay of the Last Minstrel to Castle Dangerous. 

Important as the Minstrelsy is from the point of view of 
literary criticism, the material of its introductions is chiefly 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 177. 

^ Review of Poems of William Herbert, Edinburgh Reviezv, October, 
1806. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 275-6. ^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 333. 



MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 19 

historical. The introduction in the original edition gives an 
account of life on the Border in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries, with the outlines of many of the events that stimu- 
lated ballad-making, and an analysis of the temper of the 
Marchmen among whom this kind of poetry flourished ; then 
by special introductions and notes to the poems an attempt is 
made to explain both the incidents on which they seem to have 
been founded, and parallel cases that appear in tradition or 
record. Some enthusiastic comment is included, of the kind 
that was so natural to Scott, on the effect of ballad poetry upon 
a spirited and warlike people. The writer continues : " But it 
is not the Editor's present intention to enter upon a history of 
Border poetry; a subject of great difficulty, and which the ex- 
tent of his information does not as yet permit him to engage 
in." It was, in fact, nearly thirty years later^ that Scott wrote 
the Remarks on Popular Poetry which since that date have 
formed an introduction to the book, as well as the essay. On 
Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, which at present precedes the 
third part. The more purely literary side of the editor's duty 
— leaving out of account the modern poems written by Scott 
and others — was exhibited chiefly in the construction of texts, 
a matter of which I shall speak later, after considering his 
views of the origin and character of folk-poetry in general. 

But first we may recall the fact that Scott was following 
a fairly well established vogue in giving scholarly attention to 
ancient popular poetry. A revival of interest in the study of 
mediaeval literature had been stimulated in England by the 
publication of Percy's Reliques in 1765 and Warton's History 
of English Poetry in 1774. In 1800 there were enough well- 
known antiquaries to keep Scott from being in any sense 
lonely. Among them Joseph Ritson^ was the most learned, but 
he was crotchety in the extreme; and while his notions as to 

^In 1830. 

^ Ritson's principal works were as follows : Select Collection of English 
Songs (1783) ; Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry from Aiithentic Manu- 
scripts and Old Printed Copies (1791) ; Ancient Songs from the Time of 
Henry III. to the Revolution (1792) ; Scottish Songs with the Genuine 
Music (1794) ; Poems by Laurence Minot (1795) ; Robin Hood Poems 
(179s) j Ancient English Metrical Romances (1802). 



20 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

research were in advance of his time, his controversial style 
resembled that of the seventeenth century. George Ellis,^ on 
the other hand, was distinguished by an eighteenth-century 
urbanity, and his combination of learning and good taste fitted 
him to influence a broader public than that of specialists. At 
the same time he was a delightful and stimulating friend to 
other scholars. Southey was becoming known as an authority 
on the history and literature of the Spanish peninsula. A 
review in the Quarterly a dozen years later mentions these 
three,^Ellis, Scott, and Southey, — as " good men and true " 
to serve as guides in the remote realms of literature.^ Ellis's 
friend, John Hookham Frere, had great abilities but was an 
incurable dillettante. Scott particularly admired a Middle- 
English version of The Battle of Brunanbtirgh which 
Frere wrote in his school-boy days, and considered him an 
authoritative critic of mediaeval English poetry. Robert Sur- 
tees' and Francis Douce* were antiquaries of some importance, 
and both, like all the others named, were friends of Scott. Mr. 
Herford calls this period a day of " Specimens " and extracts : 
" Mediaeval romance was studied in Ellis's Specimens" he 
says, " the Elizabethan drama in Lamb's, literary history at 
large in D'Israeli's gently garrulous compilations of its ' quar- 
rels,' ' amenities,' ' calamities,' and ' curiosities.' "^ But the 
scholarship of the time on the whole is worthy of respect. In 
the case of ballads and romances notable work had been done 
before Scott entered the field,^ and he and his contemporaries 

1 Ellis published his Specimens of the Early English Poets in 1790, and 
it was reissued with the addition of the Introduction in i8or and 1803. 
He edited also Way's translations of the Fabliaux (1796), and Specimens 
of Early English Romances in Metre (1805). 

^Review of Dunlop's History of Fiction, July, 1815. 

^The Magnum Opus of Robert Surtees was his History of Durham, pub- 
lished 1816-1840. 

* Douce published Illustrations of Shakespeare in 1807. Later he edited 
Arnold's Chronicle ; Judicium, a Pageant ; and a metrical Life of St. Robert. 
The two latter, which appeared in 1822 and 1824, were done for the Rox- 
burghe Club. In 1824 he also wrote some notes for Warton's History of 
English Poetry. 

^ Age of Wordsworth, p. 39. 

^A number of volumes containing old ballads together with modern 
imitations had been published both before and after the appearance of 
Percy's Reliques, but Ritson's collections were the first, except Percy's, to 
treat the material in a scholarly way. 



MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 21 

were carrying out the promise of the half century before them 
— continuing the work that Percy and Warton had begun. 

Among the problems connected with ballad study, that which 
arises first is naturally the question of origins. Scott made no 
attempt to formulate a theory different in any main element 
from that which was held by his predecessors. He agreed 
with Percy that ballads were composed and sung by minstrels, 
and based his discussion on the materials brought forward by 
Percy and Ritson for use in their great controversy.^ Ritson 
himself never doubted that ballads were composed and sung 
by individual authors, though he might refuse to call them 
minstrels. The idea of communal authorship, which Jacob 
Grimm was to suggest only half a dozen years after the first 
edition of the Minstrelsy, would doubtless have been rejected 
by Scott, even if he had considered it. But we have no evi- 
dence that he did so. Probably he did not, as he never felt 
the need of a new theory.^ 

^The discussion centered upon the social and literary position of min- 
strels. The first edition of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, pub- 
lished in 1765, contained an essay on the History of Minstrelsy, and one 
on the Origin of the Metrical Romances, which, taken together, says Mr. 
Courthope, " may be said to furnish the first generalized theory of the nature 
of mediaeval poetry." {History of English Poetry, Vol. I, p. 426.) Percy 
considered the minstrels as the authors of the compositions which they sang 
to the harp, and as holding a dignified social position similar to that of the 
Anglo-Saxon scop or the old Norse scald. This theory was vigorously 
attacked by Joseph Ritson in the preface of his Select Collection of English 
Songs in 1783, and again in his Ancient English Metrical Romances in 
1802, and in his essay On the Ancient English Minstrels in Ancient Songs 
and Ballads (1792). Ritson contended that minstrels were musical per- 
formers of a low class, or even acrobats, and that they were not literary 
composers. Scott used his knowledge of ballads and romances and the 
customs depicted in them to reinforce his own decision that the truth lay 
somewhere between the two extremes. He pointed out that the word may 
have covered a wide variety of professional entertainers. A modern com- 
ment (by E. K. Chambers, in The Mediaeval Stage, Vol. I, p. 66) seems 
like an echo of Scott: "This general antithesis between the higher and 
lower minstrelsy may now, perhaps, be regarded as established. It was 
the neglect of it, surely, that led to that curious and barren logomachy 
between Percy and Ritson, in which neither of the disputants can be said 
to have had hold of more than a bare half of the truth." 

2 Scott's theory as to the authorship of ballads is even now held by Mr. 
Courthope. At the end of his chapter on Minstrelsy, in The History of 
English Poetry, he thus sums up the matter : " All the evidence cited in 



22 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

Scott's opinion in regard to the transmission of ballads fol- 
lowed naturally from his theory of their origin. His aristo- 
cratic instincts perhaps helped to determine his belief that 
ballads were composed by gifted minstrels, -and that they 
had deteriorated in the process of being handed down by reci- 
tation. He called tradition " a sort of perverted alchymy which 
converts gold into lead." "All that is abstractedly poetical," 
he said, " all that is above the comprehension of the merest 
peasant, is apt to escape in frequent repetition ; and the lacunae 
thus created are filled up either by lines from other ditties or 
from the mother wit of the reciter or singer. The injury, in 
either case, is obvious and irreparable."^ From this point of 
view Scott considered that the ballads were only getting their 
rights when a skilful hand gave them such a retouching as 
should enable them to appear in something of what he called 
their original vigor.^ 

We may learn what qualities he considered necessary for an 
editor in this field, from the latter part of his Remarks on 
Popiilar Poetry, in which he discusses previous attempts to col- 
lect English and Scottish ballads: Of Percy he speaks in the 
highest terms, here and elsewhere. We have seen that he felt 

this chapter shows that, so far from the ballad being a spontaneous product 
of popular imagination, it was a type of poem adapted by the professors 
of the declining art of minstrelsy, from the romances once in favour with 
the educated classes. Everything in the ballad — matter, form, composition 
— is the work of the minstrel ; all that the people do is to remember and 
repeat what the minstrel has put together." This statement represents a 
position which is actively assailed by the adherents of the communal origin 
theory. Another critical idea which originated in Germany, and in which 
Scott had no interest, though he knew something about it, was the Wolf- 
fian hypothesis in regard to the Homeric poems. He once heard Coleridge 
expound the subject, but failed to join in the discussion. {Journal, Vol. 
n, p. 164; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 193.) He said the theory could never be 
held by any poet. See a note by Lockhart on the essay on Popular Poetry. 
Henderson's edition of Minstrelsy , Vol. I, p. 3. 

1 Review of Cromek's Reltques of Burns. Quarterly Review, February, 
1809. 

2 " No one but Burns ever succeeded in patching up old Scottish songs 
with any good effect," Scott wrote in his Journal (Vol. H, p. 25). And 
in his review of Cromek's Reliques of Burns he said on the same subject 
of Scottish songs : " Few, whether serious or humorous, past through his 
hands without receiving some of those magic touches which, without greatly 
altering the song, restored its original spirit, or gave it more than it had 
ever possessed." (Quarterly, February, 1809.) 



MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 23 

a Strong sympathy with Percy's desire to dress up the ballads 
and make them as attractive to the public as their intrinsic 
charms render them to their friends. He did not of course 
realize the extent to which the Bishop reworked his materials, 
as the publication of the folio manuscript has since revealed it, 
and Ritson's captious remarks on the subject were naturally 
discounted on the score of their ill-temper. But it is not to be 
doubted that Ritson had an appreciable effect on Scott's atti- 
tude, by stirring him up to some comprehension of the things 
that might be said in favor even of dull accuracy. Ritson's 
collections are cited in their place, with a tribute to the extreme 
fidelity of their editor. It is a pity that this accurate scholar 
could not have had a sufficient amount of literary taste, to say 
nothing of good manners, to inspire others with a fuller trust 
in his method. Scott expresses impatience with him for seem- 
ing to prefer the less effective text in many instances, " as if a 
poem was not more likely to be deteriorated than improved by 
passing through the mouths of many reciters."^ He admitted, 
however, that it was not in his own period necessary to rework 
the ballads as much as Bishop Percy had done, since the 
Reliques had already created an audience for popular poetry. 
His purpose evidently was to steer a middle course between 
such graceful but sophisticated versions as were given in the 
Reliques, and the exact transcript of everything to be gathered 
from tradition, whether interesting or not, that was attempted 
by Ritson. In his later revisions he gave way more than at 
first to his natural impulse in favor of the added graces which 
he could supply.^ 

It is easy to see how his own contributions of word and 
phrase might slip in, since his avowed method was to collate 
the different texts secured from manuscripts or recitation or 
both, and so to give what to his mind was the worthiest ver- 
sion. Believing that the ballads had been composed by men not 
unlike himself, he assumed, in the manner well known to clas- 
sical text-critics, that his familiarity with the conditions of the 

^Remarks on Popular Poetry, Henderson's edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, 
p. 46. 

* Henderson's edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. xix. 



24 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

ancient social order gave him some license for changing here 
and there a word or a line. In determining which stanzas or 
lines to choose, when choice was possible, he was guided by 
his antiquarian knowledge and by the general principle of 
selecting the most poetic rendering among those at his com- 
mand. This was his way of showing his respect for the min- 
strel bards of whom he was fond of considering himself a 
successor. 

So far it is perfectly easy to take his point of view. But it 
is more difficult to reconcile his practice with his professions. 
We find this declaration in the forefront of the book : " No 
liberties have been taken either with the recited or written 
copies of these ballads, farther than that, where they disagreed, 
which is by no means unusual, the editor, in justice to the 
author, has uniformly preserved what seemed to him the best 
or most poetical rendering of the passage. . . . Some arrange- 
ment was also occasionally necessary to recover the rhyme, 
which was often, by the ignorance of the reciters, transposed 
or thrown into the middle of the line. With these freedoms, 
which were essentially necessary to remove obvious corruptions 
and fit the ballads for the press, the editor presents them to the 
public, under the complete assurance that they carry with them 
the most indisputable marks of their authenticity."^ In the 
face of this fair announcement we are surprised, to say the 
least, at the number of lines and stanzas which scholars have 
discovered to be of Scott's own composition.^ 

1 Henderson's edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, pp. 167-8. 

2 The matter may be traced in Child's collection of ballads, or more 
easily in the latest edition of the Minstrelsy, edited by T. F. Henderson 
and published in four volumes in 1902. Mr. Henderson's views of ballad 
origins are quite in accord with Scott's own, but he notes the points at 
which Scott failed to follow any originals. There seems to be some reason 
to believe, however, though Mr. Henderson does not say so, that Scott wrote 
Kinmont Willie without any originals at all, except the very similar situa- 
tions in three or four other ballads. See the introduction by Professor 
Kittredge to the abridged edition of Child's ballads, edited by himself and 
Helen Child Sargent. 

It is unnecessary to give here any detailed account of Scott's procedure, 
as the matter has been thoroughly worked out by students of ballads. A 
few examples may be given as illustrations, however. In The Dozvie Dens 
of Yarrow (Henderson's edition. Vol. Ill, p. 173) 28 lines out of the 68 



MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 25 

Occasionally his notes give some slight indication of his 
method of treatment, as for instance this, on The Dowie Dens 
of Yarrow: " The editor found it easy to collect a variety of 
copies ; but very difficult indeed to select from them such a col- 
lated edition as might in any degree suit the taste of 'these 
more light and giddy-paced times.' " Notes on some others 
of the ballads say that " a few conjectural emendations have 
been found necessary," but no one of these remarks would 
seem really ingenuous in a modern scholar when we consider 
how far the " conjectural emendations " extended. Moreover, 
changes were often made without the slightest clue in intro- 
duction or note.^ 

The case was complicated for Scott by the poetical tastes of 
his assistants. Leyden^ was apparently quite capable of taking 

are noted by Mr. Henderson as either changed or added by Scott. Scott 
writes (beginning of fifth stanza), "As he gaed up the Tennies bank" for 
" As he gaed up yon high, high hill," and we find from a note of Lockhart's 
that The Tennies is the name of a farm belonging to the Duke of Buc- 
cleuch. In the sixth stanza Scott changes the lines, 
" O ir ye come to drink the wine 

As we hae done before, O ? " to 
f " O come ye here to part your land, 

The bcnnie forest thorough ? " 
In the seventeenth stanza he changes, 

" A better rose will never spring 

Than him I've lost on Yarrow?" to 
" A fairer rose did never bloom 

Than now lies cropp'd on Yarrow." 
In Jellon Grame (Vol. Ill, p. 203), Mr. Henderson notes changes in 15 
different lines, and points out 2 whole stanzas, out of the 21, that are 
interpolated. In the Gay Goss-hawk (Vol. Ill, p. 187) 6 stanzas out of 
39 are noted as probably wholly or mainly by Scott, and 30 stanzas were 
changed by him. Sometimes his alterations occurred in every line of a 
stanza. It is probable that Scott changed Jamie Telfer enough to make 
the Scotts take the place of prominence that had been held by the Elliotts 
in the original form of the story. See The Triistzvorthiness of Border 
Ballads as Exempliiied by 'Jamie Telfer i' the Fair Dodhead' and other 
Ballads; by Lieut.-Col. the Hon. Fitzwilliam Elliott. Reviewed in Edin- 
burgh Review, No. 418, p. 306 (October, 1906). 

^ See the examples given in the preceding note. Most of the changes 
there spoken of were made without annotation. 

^This extraordinary young man was poet and scholar on his own account 
by 1800, though he was four years younger than Scott. His erudition in 
many fields was remarkable, and he was as enthusiastic as Scott himself 
about Scotch poetry, and was the chief assistant in gathering ballads for 



26 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

down a ballad from recitation in such a way as to produce a 
more finished poem than one would expect a traditional ballad 
to be. And Hogg,* who supplied several ballads from the reci- 
tations of his mother and other old people, was probably still 
less strict. " Sure no man," he is quoted as having said, " will 
think an old song the worse of being somewhat harmonious."- 
Yet it is easy to see that Scott's friends might have acted dif- 
ferently if his own practice had favored absolute fidelity to the 
texts. 

A remark in Scott's review of Evans's Old Ballads seems a 
pretty definite arraignment of his own procedure. " It may be 
asked by the severer antiquary of the present day, why an 
editor, thinking it necessary to introduce such alterations in 
order to bring forth a new, beautiful, and interesting sense 
from a meagre or corrupted original, did not in good faith 
to his readers acquaint them with the liberties he had taken 
and make them judge whether in so doing he transgressed his 
limits. We answer that unquestionably such would be the 
express duty of a modern editor, but such were not the rules 
of the service when Dr. Percy first opened the campaign."^ 

One wonders whether the " rules of the service " did not in 
Scott's opinion occasionally permit a little wilful mystification. 
The case of Kinmont Willie tempts one to such an explanation. 

the Minstrelsy. He also collected the material for the essay on Fairies in 
the second volume, which was especially praised by the reviewer in the 
Edinburgh Review (January, 1803). Leyden's chief fame was derived 
from his wonderfully varied activities in India, from 1803 to his early 
death in 181 1. Any reader of Lockhart's Life of Scott or of Scott's 
delightful little memoir, published first in the Edinburgh Annual Register 
for 181 1, and inckided in the Miscellaneous Prose Works, must feel that 
the uncouth young genius is a familiar acquaintance. 

^The Ettrick Shepherd, who, after reading the first two volumes of the 
Minstrelsy, sought an acquaintance with Scott, and offered assistance which 
was gladly made use of in the preparation of the third volume. Scott in 
his turn provided much of the material for Hogg's Jacobite Relics, pub- 
lished in 1819. The following note on one of the songs in that work adds 
to the reader's doubts concerning the accuracy of Scott's texts : " I have 
not altered a word from the manuscript, which is in the handwriting of 
an amanuensis of Mr. Scott's, the most incorrect transcriber, perhaps, that 
ever tried the business." {Jacobite Relics, Vol. I, p. 282. Note on song 
Ixiii.) 

2 Henderson's edition of the Minstrelsy , Vol. I, p. 284. 

^Quarterly, May, 1810. 



MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 27 

Besides the capital instance of his anonymity as regards the 
novels, Scott several times seemed to amuse himself in per- 
plexing the public. There was the case of the Bridal of Trier- 
main, which he tried by means of various careful devices to 
pass off as the work of a friend. But perhaps the best ex- 
ample appears in connection with The Fortunes of Nigel. He 
first designed the material of that book for a series of " private 
letters " purporting to have been written in the reign of James 
I., but when he had finally complied with the advice of his 
friends and used it for a novel, he said to Lockhart, ** You 
were all quite right : if the letters had passed for genuine, they 
would have found favour only with a few musty antiquaries."^ 
This suggests comparison with the conduct of his friend Robert 
Surtees, who palmed off upon him three whole ballads of his 
own and got them inserted in the Minstrelsy as ancient, with a 
plausible tale concerning the circumstances of their recovery. 
Surtees, one is interested to observe, never dared tell Scott the 
truth, and Scott always accepted the ballads as genuine — a lack 
of discernment rather compromising in an editor, though one 
may perhaps excuse him on the ground of his confidence in his 
brother antiquary.^ 

In one direction Scott seems to have been more conscientious 
than we might be inclined to suppose after seeing the discrep- 
ancy between the standard of exactness that his own statements 
lead us to expect and the results that actually appear. I believe 
that he intended to preserve the manuscript texts just as he 
received them, and that he would have wished to have them 
given to the public when the public was prepared to want them. 
To support this theory we have first the fact that most of his 
own emendations have been traced by means of the manu- 

'^ Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 514. 

^ Still more striking evidence that Scott lacked an infallible sense of the 
difference between genuine and spurious ballad material is afforded by his 
comments on Peter Buchan's collection, which is now considered par- 
ticularly untrustworthy. He thought that with two or three exceptions 
the pieces in the book were genuine, and said : " I scarce know anything 
so easily discovered as the piecing and patching of an old ballad ; the darns 
in a silk stocking are not more manifest." {Correspondence of C. K. 
Sharpe, Vol. II, p. 424.) 



28 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

scripts which he used.^ It is significant that in speaking of a 
poet who had altered a manuscript to suit a revised reading he 
grew indignant over that fault far more than over the mere 
change in the published version. The Raid of the Reidswire, 
he said, " first appeared in Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, but some 
liberties have been taken by him in transcribing it; and, what 
is altogether unpardonable, the manuscript, which is itself 
rather inaccurate, has been interpolated to favour his readings ; 
of which there remain obvious marks."^ Scott said also that 
the time had come for the publication of Percy's folio manu- 
script; though we must believe that he would not have wished 
to see the manuscript published until the ballads had become 
familiar to the world in what he considered a beautified form. 
The changes Scott made were usually in style rather than in 
substance. Often he merely substituted an archaic word for 
a modern one; but often whole lines and longer passages 
offered temptations which the poet in him could not resist, and 
he " improved " lavishly. For example, we have his note on 
Em-l Richard — " The best verses are here selected from both 
copies, and some trivial alterations have been adopted from 
tradition," — with the comment by Mr. Henderson — "The 
emendations of Scott are so many, and the majority relate so 
entirely to style, that no mere tradition could have supplied 
them."^ His versions are in general characterized by a smooth- 
ness and precision of meter which to the student of ballads is 
very suspicious. But he seems occasionally to have altered 
or supplied incidents as well as phrases. The historical event 

^ Scott's manuscript collections of ballads dropped partially out of sight 
after his death, and it was only about 1890 that their magnitude and im- 
portance became known. Professor Child and later editors have found 
them of very great service. (On Child's use of the Abbotsford materials, 
see the Advertisement to Part VIII of his collection, contained in Volume 
IV.) In 1880 appeared a reprint of the Ballad Book of C. K. Sharpe, 
" with notes and ballads from the unpublished manuscripts of C. K. Sharpe 
and Sir Walter Scott," but the contributions from Scott's papers did not 
amount to much. Scott's materials were at the service of his friend for 
use in the original edition of the Ballad Book, published in 1823. See 
Sharpe' s Correspondence, Vol. II, pp. 264, 271 and 325, for letters from 
Scott on this subject. 

^Note on The Raid of the Reidswire, in the Minstrelsy. 

* Henderson's edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. Ill, p. 232. 



MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 29 

which furnished the purpose for the expedition of Sir Patrick 
Spens seems to have been introduced into the ballad by Scott, 
and Mr. Henderson thinks that " when the deeds of his ances- 
tors were concerned it was impossible for him to resist the 
temptation to employ some of his own minstrel art on their 
behalf."! 

Certainly Scott's qualifications for evolving true poetry out 
of the crude fragments that sometimes served as a basis formed 
a very unusual combination when they were united with his 
knowledge of early history and literature. He had such con- 
fidence in his own powers in this direction that he at one time 
intended to write a series of imitations of Scottish poets of 
different periods, from Thomas the Rhymer down, and thus to 
exhibit changes in language as well as variations in literary 
style. 2 He evidently thought that the ballads as they appeared 
in the Minstrelsy were truer to their originals than were the 
copies he was able to procure from recitation. Lockhart gives 
him precisely the kind of praise he would have desired, in say- 
ing, " From among a hundred corruptions he seized with in- 
stinctive tact the primitive diction and imagery."* 

It is evident that Scott's public did not wish him to be more 
careful than he was in discriminating between new and old 
matter. One of his moments of strict veracity seems even to 
have occasioned some annoyance to the writer of the Edin- 
burgh article, who apparently preferred to believe in the an- 
tiquity of The Flozuers of the Forest rather than to learn that 
" the most positive evidence " proved its modern origin. The 
editor's introduction to the poem seems perfectly clear; he 
names his authority and quotes two verses which are ancient ;* 
but the reviewer says with a perverse irritability : " Mr. Scott 
would have done well to tell us how much he deems ancient, 
and to give us the ' positive evidence ' that convinced him the 
zuhole was not so."^ This review was, however, for the most 
part favorable. 

The fact that Scott included modern imitations of the ballad 

^Henderson's edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. II, p. 57- 
^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 360. ^Ibid., Vol. I, p. 332. 

* First edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. II, pp. 156-7. 
^Edinburgh Review, January, 1803. 



30 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

in his book is another indication that his attitude was Hke that 
of his predecessors.^ Doubtless these helped the Minstrelsy to 
sell, but a more modern taste would choose to put them in a 
place by themselves, not in a collection of old ballads. An 
essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad was written, as were 
the Remarks on Popular Poetry, for the 1833 edition. It is 
chiefly interesting for its autobiographical matter, though it 
also contains criticisms of Burns and other writers of ballad 
poetry — ■" a species of literary labour which the author has 
himself pursued with some success."^ Scott's statement that 
the ballad style was very popular at the time he began to write, 
and that he followed the prevailing fashion, was one of many 
examples of his modesty, taken in connection with the remark 
in another part of the essay to the effect that this style " had 
much to recommend it, especially as it presented considerable 
facilities to those who wished at as little exertion or trouble as 
possible to attain for themselves a certain degree of literary 
reputation." To complete the comparison, however, we need 
an observation found in one of Scott's reviews, on the spu- 
rious ballad poetry, full of false sentiment, sometimes written 
in the eighteenth century. " It is the very last refuge of those 
who can do nothing better in the shape of verse; and a man 

' The Minstrelsy is arranged in three parts : I., Historical Ballads ; II., 
Romantic Ballads; III., Imitations of the Ballad. The first part is preceded 
by the Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry, and by the historical 
introduction. The second part is preceded by the essay on The Fairies of 
Popular Superstition ; and the third by the essay on Imitations of the 
Ancient Ballad. The poems by Scott given in this third part are as fol- 
lows : Thomas the Rhymer (parts 2 and 3), Glenfinlas, The Eve of St. 
John, Cadyow Castle, The Gray Brother, War Song of the Royal Edinburgh 
Light Dragoons. Besides these there are three poems by John Leyden 
(and he has also an Ode on Scottish Music preceding the Romantic bal- 
lads), two by C. K. Sharpe, three by John Marriott, who was tutor to the 
children of the Duke of Buccleuch, and one each by Matthew Lewis, Anna 
Seward, Dr. Jamieson, Colin Mackenzie, J. B. S. Morritt, and an unnamed 
author. In the other parts of the book there are a few imitations, notably 
the three by Surtees — Lord Ewine, the Death of Feather stonhaugh, and 
Barthram's Dirge, which Scott supposed were old ; and one or two like 
the Flowers of the Forest, which he noted as largely modern, or which 
he had found, after arranging his material, to be wholly modern. Nearly 
forty old ballads were published in the Minstrelsy for the first time. 

^ Remarks on Popular Poetry, conclusion. 



MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 31 

of genius should disdain to invade the province of these 
dawdhng rhymers."^ 

Scott's criticism of ballad style probably suffered from his 
interest in modern imitations of ballads. Perhaps also the real 
quality of ancient popular poetry was a little obscured for him 
by his belief that it was written by professional or semi-profes- 
sional poets. If he wrote Kimnont Willie, he succeeded in 
catching the right tone better than anyone since him has been 
able to do, but even in this poem there are turns of phrase that 
remind one of the Lay of the Last Minstrel rather than of the 
true folk-song.2 After his first attempts at versifying he re- 
ceived from William Taylor, of Norwich, who had made an 
earlier translation of Biirger's Lenore, a letter of hearty praise 
intermingled with very sensible remarks about the tendency in 
some parts of Scott's Chase toward too great elaboration.^ 
Scott's answer was as follows : " I do not . . . think quite so 
severely of the Darwinian style, as to deem it utterly incon- 
sistent with the ballad, which, at least to judge from the exam- 
ples left us by antiquity, admits in some cases of a considerable 
degree of decoration. Still, however, I do most sincerely agree 
with you, that this may be very easily overdone, and I am far 
from asserting that this may not be in some degree my own 
case ; but there is scarcely so nice a line to distinguish, as that 
which divides true simplicity from flatness and Sternholdianism 
(if I may be allowed to coin the word), and therefore it is not 
surprising, that in endeavouring to avoid the latter, so young 
and inexperienced a rhymer as myself should sometimes have 
deviated also from the former."* This was Scott's earliest 
stage as a man of letters, and he evidently learned more about 
ballads later. But there appears in much of his criticism on 
the subject a limitation which may be assigned partly to his 

^ Review of the Poems of William Herbert. Edinburgh Review, October, 
1806. 

2 Stanzas 10-12, and 31, are noted by Child as particularly suspicious. 
"Basnet," which occurs in stanza 10, is not a very common word in ballads. 
It is used in The Lay, Canto I., stanza 25, and in Marmion, Canto VI, st. 21. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 221. 

^Memoir of William Taylor, Vol. I, pp. 98-99, and see Sharpe's Corre- 
spondence, Vol. I, pp. 146-7, for a letter to Sharpe on a similar point. 



32 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

time, and partly, no doubt, to the fact that he was a poet and 
could not forget all the sophistications of his art. 

The true nature of ballad poetry could hardly be understood 
until scholars had investigated the structure of primitive so- 
ciety in a way that Scott's contemporaries were not at all pre- 
pared to do. Even Scott, with all his intelligent interest in 
by-gone institutions and modes of expression, could hardly 
have foreseen the anthropological researches which the problem 
of literary origins has since demanded. We do not find, then, 
that Scott's work on ballads was marked by any special origi- 
nality in point of view or method. The Minstrelsy of the Scot- 
tish Border was a notable book because it did better what other 
men had tried to do, and especially because of the charm and 
effectiveness of its historical comment. It was more trust- 
worthy than Percy's collection and more graceful than Ritson's ; 
it was richer than other books of the kind in what people cared 
to have when they wanted ballads, and yet was not, for its time, 
over-sophisticated. Scott's conclusions cannot now be accepted 
without question, but the illustrations with which he sets them 
forth and the wide reading and sincere love of folk-poetry 
which evidently lie behind them produce a pleasant effect of 
ripe and reasonable judgment. The admirable qualities of 
the book were at once recognized by competent critics, and it 
will always be studied with enthusiasm by scholars as well as 
by the uncritical lover of ballads. 

Studies in the Romances 

Scott's theory as to the connection between ballads and romances — 
His early fondness for romances — His acquaintance with Romance 
languages — His work on the Sir Tristrem — Value of his edition — 
Special quality of Scott's interest in the Middle Ages — General theo- 
ries expressed in the body of his work on romances — His type of 
scholarship. 

Ballads and romances are so closely related that Scott's 
early and lasting interest in the one form naturally grew out 
of his interest in the other. He held the theory that "the 
romantic ballads of later times are for the most part abridg- 
ments of the ancient metrical romances, narrated in a smoother 



STUDIES IN THE ROMANCES 33 

Stanza and more modern language."^ It is not surprising, 
then, that a considerable body of his critical work has to do 
with the subject of mediaeval romance. 

Throughout his boyhood Scott read all the fairy tales, eastern 
stories, and romances of knight-errantry that fell in his way. 
When he was about thirteen, he and a young friend used to 
spend hours reading together such authors as Spenser, Ariosto, 
and Boiardo.- He remembered the poems so well that weeks 
or months afterwards he could repeat whole pages that had 
particularly impressed him. Somewhat later the two boys im- 
provised similar stories to recite to each other, Scott being 
the one who proposed the plan and the more successful in 
carrying it out. With this same friend he studied Italian and 
began to read the Italian poets in the original. In his auto- 
biography he says :^ " I had previously renewed and extended 
my knowledge of the French language, from the same prin- 
ciple of romantic research. Tressan's romances, the Biblio- 
theque Bleue, and Bibliotheque de Romans, were already fa- 
miliar to me, and I now acquired similar intimacy with the 
works of Dante, Boiardo, Pulci, and other eminent Italian 
authors." Writing some years later he remarked : " I was 
once the most enormous devourer of the Italian romantic 
poetry, which indeed is the only poetry of their country which 
I ever had much patience for ; for after all that has been said 
of Petrarch and his school, I am always tempted to exclaim 
like honest Christopher Sly, ' Marvellous good matter, would 
it were done.' But with Charkmagne and his paladins I could 
dwell forever."* Scott learned languages easily, and he read 
Spanish with about as much facility as Italian. Don Quixote 
seems often to be the guide with whom he chooses to traverse 
the fields of romance.^ In Scott's boyhood one of his teachers 
noticed that he could follow and enjoy the meaning of what he 

^ Minstrelsy, Introduction to Lord Thomas and Fair Annie. 

^Lockhart, Vol. I, p. loi. ^ Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 35-6. 

* Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 244. See also Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 408. 

^Sometime before 1821 (probably a good while before, but the date 
cannot be fixed), Scott began a translation of Don Quixote, and afterwards 
gave the work over to Lockhart, who completed it. See Constable's Cor- 
respondence, Vol. Ill, p. 161. 

3 



34 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

read in Latin better than many of his school-fellows who knew 
more about the language, and it was the same all through his 
life — he got what he wanted from foreign literatures with very 
little trouble. 

Scott constantly refers to the work of Percy, Warton, Tres- 
san,^ Ritson, and Ellis, in the study of ancient romances, but 
in editing Sir Tristrem he made one part of the field his own, 
and became the authority whom he felt obliged to quote in the 
Essay on Romance. 

Thomas the Rhymer of Erceldoune was at first an object of 
interest to Scott because of the ballad of True Thomas and the 
traditions concerning him that floated about the countryside. 
The " Rhymer's Glen " was afterwards a cherished possession 
of Scott's own on the Abbotsford estate. In the Advocates' 
Library at Edinburgh, of which Scott was in 1795 appointed a 
curator, was an important manuscript that contained among 
other metrical romances one professing to be a copy of that 
written by Thomas of Erceldoune on Sir Tristrem. From a 
careful piecing together of evidence furnished by this poem and 
by Robert of Brunne, with the assistance of certain legal docu- 
ments which supplied dates, Scott built up about the old poet 
a theory that he elaborated in his edition of Sir Tristrem, pub- 
lished in 1804, and that continued to interest him vividly as 
long as he lived. It reappears in many of his critical writings^ 
and also in the novels. In the Bride of Lammermoor Ravens- 
wood goes to his death in compliance with the prophecy of 
Thomas quoted by the superstitious Caleb Balderstone. And in 
Castle Dangerous Bertram, who is unconvincing perhaps 
because he is endowed with the literary and antiquarian tastes 
of a Walter Scott himself, is actuated by an irrepressible desire 
to discover works of the Rhymer. 

^Louis-Elizabeth de la Vergne, Comte de Tressan, was born in 1705 and 
died in 1783. In early life he was sent to Rome on diplomatic business, 
and it is said that in the Vatican library he acquired his taste for the 
literature of chivalry. His chief works were Amadis de Gaules (1779) ; 
Roland furieux (translated from the Italian, 1780) ; Corps d'extraits romans 
de chevalerie (1782). His translations were partly adaptations, and were 
far from being rendered with precision. 

* See particularly his article on Ellis's and Ritson's Metrical Romances 
{Edinburgh Review, January, 1806), the essay on Romance, and Remarks 
on Popular Poetry in the Minstrelsy. 



STUDIES IN THE ROMANCES 35 

Scott's edition of Sir Tristrem gives — besides the text, intro- 
duction, and notes — a short conclusion written by himself in 
imitation of the original poet's style. Much of his theory has 
fallen. He considered this Sir Tristrem to be the first of the 
written versions of that story, a supposition that was not long 
tenable. The poem is now known to be based upon a French 
original, and many scholars think the name Erceldoune was 
arbitrarily inserted by the English translator; though Mr. 
McNeill, the latest editor, thinks there is a " reasonable proba- 
bility " in favor of Scott's opinion that the author was the his- 
toric Thomas, who flourished in the thirteenth century. It is 
important, however, that Scott's scholarship in the matter 
passed muster at that time with such men as Ellis, who wrote 
the review in the Edinburgh, in which he said, "Upon the 
whole we are much disposed to adopt the general inferences 
drawn by Mr. Scott from his authorities, and have great 
pleasure in bearing testimony to the very uncommon diligence 
which he has evinced in collecting curious materials, and to the 
taste and sagacity with which he has employed them. . . 
With regard to the notes, they contain an almost infinite variety 
of curious information, which had been hitherto unknown or 
unnoticed."^ John Hookham Frere said, as quoted in a letter 
by Ellis, " I consider Sir Tristrem as by far the most interesting 
work that has as yet been published on the subject of our 
earliest poets."^ Scott's opinions were in 1824 thought to be 
of sufficient importance, either from their own merits or on 
account of his later fame, to call forth a dissertation appended 
to the edition of Warton's History of English Poetry published 
in that year. 

The first edition of the text swarms with errors, according to 
Kolbing,3 a recent editor of the romance, and later editions are 

Edinburgh Review, July, 1804. Ellis and Scott had had much corre- 
spondence on Sir Tristrem, and it was Ellis's queries that first led Scott 
into the detailed investigation which resulted in the separate publication 
of the work. He had intended to print it in the Minstrelsy {Lockhart, 
Vol. I, p. 289). The letters are given in Lockhart, Vol. I. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 381. 

^Dte nordische und die englische Version der Tristan-sage II. Sir 

Tristrem. Heilbronn, 1882. Mr. George P. McNeill's edition of Sir 
Tristrem was printed for the Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh, 1886. 



36 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

still very inaccurate. It could hardly be expected that a man 
with Scott's habits of mind would edit a text accurately. But 
no one of that period was competent to construct a text that 
would seem satisfactory now. The study of English philology 
was not sufficiently developed in that direction, nor did scholars 
appreciate either the difficulties or the requirements of text- 
criticism. It is not to be wondered at that Scott failed, in this 
instance as well as afterwards in the case of the text of Dryden, 
to give a version that would stand the minute scrutiny of later 
scholarship. 

His sympathies were rather with the scholar who opens the 
store of old poetry to the public, than with him who uses his 
erudition simply for the benefit of erudite people. The diction 
of the Middle Ages was interesting to him only as it reflected 
the customs and emotions of its period. He used the romances 
as authorities on ancient manners. The Chronicles of Frois- 
sart, because they give " a knowledge of mankind,"^ were 
almost as much a hobby with him as Thomas the Rhymer, and 
in this case also he endows characters in his novels with his 
own fondness for the ancient writer.' The fruit of Scott's 
acquaintance with Froissart appears prominently in his essay on 
Chivalry and in various introductions to ballads in the Min- 
strelsy, as well as in the novels of chivalry. Scott at one time 

1 Kolbing thinks Scott probably hired a transcriber who knew nothing 
of Middle English — a usual method of procedure in the beginning of the 
nineteenth century. In later editions more errors were introduced by the 
carelessness of printers, until, after 1830, when the book was included in 
the complete editions of Scott's poems, the text was collated with the manu- 
script. But it was still far from correct. Kolbing enumerates about a 
hundred and thirty mistakes (see his Introduction, p. xvii). Of these I 
took twenty-one at random, and found that eight of them did not occur in 
the 1806 edition — in other words, the person who collated the text nearly 
thirty years after Scott or his hired transcriber had done it was far from 
infallible. A few illustrations may be given of mistakes that occur in both 
the 1806 and the 1833 editions: 1. 117, send is given for sent; 1. 846, telle 
for tel ; 1. 863, How for Hou ; 1. 912, mak for make: 1. 1212, leuedi for 
leuedy ; 1. 1580, wende sche weren for whende sche were; 1. 1334, haue 
for han ; 1. 1514, as for als. 

2 Review of Johnes's Translation of Froissart, Edinburgh Review, Janu- 
ary, 1805. 

^ Waverley, and Claverhouse in Old Mortality. 



STUDIES IN THE ROMANCES 37 

proposed to publish an edition of Malory, but abandoned the 
project on learning that Southey had the same thing in mind.^ 

The first periodical review Scott ever published was on the 
subject of the Amadis de Gaul, as translated by Southey and 
by Rose. The article is long and very carefully constructed, 
and expresses many ideas on the subject of the mediaeval 
romance in general that reappear again and again, particularly 
in the essay on Romance written in 1823 for the Encyclopcedia 
Britannica. Among these general ideas that found frequent 
expression in his critical writings, one which in the light of his 
creative work becomes particularly interesting to us is his 
judgment on the distinctions between metrical and prose ro- 
mances. He always preferred the poems, though he was so 
interested in the prose stories that he talked about them with 
much enthusiasm, and it sometimes seems as if he liked best 
the kind he happened to be analyzing at the moment. 

Other matters that necessarily presented themselves when he 
was treating the subject of romance were the problem of the 
sources of narrative material, especially the perplexed question 
concerning the development of the Arthurian cycle, and the 
problem, already discussed in connection with ballads, concern- 
ing the character of minstrels. The minstrels reappear through- 
out Scott's studies in mediaeval literature, and were perhaps 
more interesting to him than any other part of the subject. 
Though, as we have seen, he formulated a compromise between 
the opposing opinions of Percy and Ritson, no one who reads 
the description of the Last Minstrel can doubt what was the 
picture that he preferred to carry in his mind. 

His ideas on the subject of the origin and diffusion of narra- 
tive material were those of the sensible man trying to look at 
the matter in a reasonable way. Here again he adopted an 
attitude of compromise, in that he admitted the partial truth 
of various theories which he considered erroneous only in so 
far as any one of them was stretched beyond its proper com- 
pass. " Romance," he said, " was like a compound metal, 
derived from various mines, and in the different specimens of 
which one metal or other was alternately predominant."^ 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 480 and 482. Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 147. 
^ Essay on Romance. 



38 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

On the subject of the Arthurian cycle, the origin of which 
has never ceased to be matter for debate, he held essentially 
the opinions that the highest French authority has adopted — 
that Celtic traditions were the foundation, and that the metrical 
romances preceded those in prose.^ The important offices of 
French poets in giving form to the story he underestimated. 
When he said, " It is now completely proved, that the earliest 
and best French romances were composed for the meridian of 
the English court," ^ he fell into the error that has not always 
been avoided by scholars who have since written on the subject, 
of feeling certitude about a proposition in which there is no 
certainty. 

Scott's work on romances, though it does not always rise 
above commonplaceness, escapes the perfunctory quality of 
hack writing by virtue of his keen interest in the subject. He 
continued to like this prosaic kind of literary task even while 
he was writing novels with the most wonderful facility. We 
may judge not only by the fact that he continued to write 
reviews at intervals throughout his life, but by an explicit ref- 
erence in his Journal: " I toiled manfully at the review till two 
o'clock, commencing at seven. I fear it will be uninteresting, 
but I like the muddling work of antiquities, and besides wish 
to record my sentiments with regard to the Gothic question."^ 

It is evident that Scott did not himself find the " muddling 
work of antiquities " dull, because he realized, emotionally as 
well as intellectually, the life of past times. This led him to 
form broader views than the ordinary student constructs out 
of his knowledge of special facts. An admirable illustration 
of this characteristic occurs in the essay on Romance, at the 
point where Scott is discussing the social position of the min- 
strels, in the light of what Percy and Ritson had said on the 
subject. He goes on: "In fact, neither of these excellent 
antiquaries has cast a general or philosophic glance on the nec- 
essary condition of a set of men, who were by profession the 
instruments of the pleasure of others during a period of society 

^ See Gaston Paris, La Litterature Frangaise an Moyen Age, i^re partie, 
ch. IV. 

^Review of Metrical Romances, Edinburgh Review, January, 1806. 
^Journal, Vol. II, pp. 258-259. 



STUDIES IN THE ROMANCES 39 

such as was presented in the Middle Ages." There follows a 
detailed and very interesting account of what the writer's own 
" philosophic glance " leads him to believe. The method is 
useful but dangerous ; in the same essay occurs an amusing 
example of what philosophy may do when it is given free rein. 
Within two pages appear these conflicting statements : " The 
Metrical Romances, though in some instances sent to the press, 
were not very fit to be published in this form. The dull am- 
plifications, which passed well enough in the course of a half- 
heard recitation, became intolerable when subjected to the eye." 
" The Metrical Romances in some instances indeed ran to great 
length, but were much exceeded in that particular by the folios 
which were written on the same or similar topics by their prose 
successors. Probably the latter judiciously reflected that a 
book which addresses itself only to the eyes may be laid aside 
when it becomes tiresome to the reader; whereas it may not 
always have been so easy to stop the minstrel in the full career 
of his metrical declamation." Flaws like this may be picked 
in the details of Scott's method, just as we may sometimes find 
fault with the lapses in his mediaeval scholarship. We do him 
no injustice when we say that aside from certain aspects of his 
work on the ballads and Sir Tristrem, his achievement was that 
of a popularizer of learning. 

But if he lacked some of the authority of erudition, he escaped 
also the induration of pedantry. In writing of remote and 
dimly known periods, critics are perhaps most apt to show their 
defects of temper, and Scott often commented on the acerbity 
of spirit which such studies seem to induce. " Antiquaries," 
he said, " are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the 
very points which are least susceptible of proof, and which are 
least valuable if the truth could be ascertained ; and which 
therefore we would gladly have seen handled with more diffi- 
dence and better temper in proportion to their uncertainty."^ 
Of Ritson he says many times in one form or another that his 
" severe accuracy was connected with an unhappy eagerness 
and irritability of temper." Scott rode his own hobbies with 
an expansive cheerfulness that did not at all hinder them from 
being essentially serious. 

^ Essay on Romance. 



40 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

Other Studies in Mediaeval Literature 

Scott's attitude on the Ossianic controversy — His slight acquaint- 
ance with other northern literatures— Anglo-Saxon scholarship of the 
time — Character of his familiarity with Middle-English poetry — His 
opinions in regard to Chaucer — General importance of Scott's work 
on mediaeval literature. 

Part of Scott's critical work on mediaeval literature falls 
outside the limits of the two divisions we have been consider- 
ing — those of ballad and romance. He knew comparatively 
little about the early poetry of the northern nations, but at some 
points his knowledge of Scottish literature made the transition 
fairly easy to the literature of other Teutonic peoples. But he 
was especially bound to be interested in the Gaelic, for a Scots- 
man of his day could hardly avoid forming an opinion in regard 
to the Ossianic controversy then raging with what Scott 
thought must be its final violence. He did not understand the 
Gaelic language,^ but he had a vivid interest in the High- 
landers. The picturesque quality of their customs made it nat- 
ural enough for him to use them in his novels, and by the 
"sheer force of genius," says Mr. Palgrave, who considers 
this Scott's greatest achievement, " he united the sympathies 
of two hostile races. "^ 

As early as 1792 Scott had written for the Speculative So- 
ciety an essay on the authenticity of Ossian's poems, and one 
of his articles for the Edinburgh Review in 1805 was on the 
same subject, occasioned by a couple of important documents 
which supported opposite sides, and which, he said, set the 
question finally at issue. This article represents Scott the 
critic in a typical attitude. The material was almost alto- 
gether furnished in the works which he was surveying.^ His 
task was to distinguish the essential points of the problem, 

'^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 46. 

2 Memoir in the Globe edition of Scott's poems. 

^ Scott adopted the conclusions of Malcolm Laing, who edited Macpher- 
son's poems and adduced parallel passages from " a mass of poetry, enough 
to serve any six gentle readers for their lifetime," as the reviewer says. 
The most of these parallels were found in " Homer, Virgil, and their two 
translators ; Milton, Thomson, Young, Gray, Mason, Home, and the Eng- 
lish Bible." Although he was convinced by the argument, Scott saw that 
the editor was in some cases misled by his own ingenuity. 



OTHER STUDIES IN MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 41 

to state them plainly, and to weigh the evidence on each side. 
In this he shows notable clearness of thought, and also, through- 
out the rather long treatment of a complicated subject, great 
lucidity in arrangement and statement. He was led by this 
study to change the opinion which he had held in common with 
most of his countrymen, and to adopt the belief that the poems 
were essentially creations of Macpherson, with only the names 
and some parts of the story adopted from the Gaelic.^ Other 
references to Ossian occur in Scott's writings, and it is evident 
in this case, as in many others, that an investigation of the 
matter in his early career, whether from original or from sec- 
ondary sources, gave him material for allusion and comment 
throughout his life. For, as we have constant occasion to 
remark in studying Scott, with a very definite grasp of con- 
crete fact he combined a vigorous generalizing power, and all 
the parts of his knowledge were actively related. He seems to 
have made little preparation for some of his most interesting 
reviews, but to have utilized in them the store gathered in his 
mind for other purposes. 

Of the northern Teutonic languages Scott had slight knowl- 
edge, though he was always interested in the northern litera- 
tures. In a review of the Poems of William Herbert, of which 
the part most interesting to the reviewer consisted of transla- 
tions from the Icelandic, Scott says : " We do not pretend any 
great knowledge of Norse ; but we have so far traced the 
' Runic rhyme ' as to be sensible how much more easy it is to 
give a just translation of that poetry into English than into 
Latin." In the same review we find him saying, after a slight 
discussion of the style of Scaldic poetry, " The other transla- 
tions are generally less interesting than those from the Ice- 
landic. There is, however, one poem from the Danish, which 
I transcribe as an instance how very clearly the ancient popular 
ballad of that country corresponds with our own." So we see 
him drawing from all sources fuel for his favorite fire — the 
study of ballads. Very characteristically also Scott suggests 

1 Later, however (in the essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, 
1830), he said: "In their spirit and diction they nearly resemble fragments 
of poetry extant in Gaelic." By this time he was probably reverting to 
the earlier opinion which had made the more vivid impression. 



42 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

that the author should extend his researches to the popular 
poetry of Scandinavia, " which we cannot help thinking is the 
real source of many of the tales of our minstrels."^ It seems 
probable that Scott's acquaintance with northern literatures 
came partly through his ill-fated amanuensis, Henry Weber. ^ 
His acknowledgement in the introduction to Sir Tristrem 
would indicate this, taken together with other references by 
Scott to Weber's attainments. 

Scott could hardly be called a student of Anglo-Saxon, though 
he was perhaps able to read the language. His remarks on 
the subject may, however, mean simply that he was familiar 
with early Middle English.' In his essay on Romance he re- 
ferred to Sharon Turner's account of the story of Beowulf, 
but called the poem Caedmon, and made no correction when 
he added the later foot-note in regard to Conybeare's fuller 
and more interesting analysis published in 1826.* The re- 
searches of these men indicate the state of Anglo-Saxon schol- 
arship in England. Sharon Turner's very inaccurate descrip- 
tion of Beoiviilf was published in 1805. Danish scholars made 
the first translations of the poem, but no one could give a really 

^ For the Northern Antiquities , edited by Robert Jamieson and published 
in 1 8 14, Scott wrote an abstract of the Eyrbyggja Saga, using, as one would 
conclude from his introductory words, the Latin version made by Thorke- 
lin, who published the saga in 1787. The purpose of the publication re- 
quired the historical and antiquarian rather than the literary point of view, 
and accordingly we find Scott's notes occupied with historical comment. 

^ In 1804 Weber came to Edinburgh in a deplorable condition of pov- 
erty, and was employed and assisted in literary work by Scott during the 
following nine years. In 1813 he was seized with insanity, and challenged 
Scott, across the study table, to an immediate duel with pistols. Scott 
supported Weber during the remaining five years of his life in an insane 
hospital. He was much liked by the Scott family. Scott rated his learn- 
ing very highly, and gave him valuable assistance in various literary 
projects. Weber's chief publications were: Metrical Romances of the 
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries, with Introduction, Notes 
and Glossary (1810) ; Dramatic Works of John Ford, with Introduction 
and Explanatory Notes (181 1) ; Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, with 
Introduction and Explanatory Notes (1812) : to this Scott's notes were 
the most valuable contribution ; Illustrations of Northern Antiquities 
(18:4), with Jamieson and Scott. 

* See his essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad. 

^Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, translated by the Vicar of Bath- 
easton. Conybeare had died two years before the publication of the book. 



OTHER STUDIES IN MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 43 

scholarly text or translation until the year after Scott died, 
when the first edition by J. M. Kemble appeared. There were 
students of the language, however, who were doing good work 
in feeling their way toward a comprehension of its special quali- 
ties. One of these was George Ellis, In his Specimens he 
published examples of Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English poetry, 
and his information was helpful in enlarging Scott's outlook. 
Scott's own knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature did not 
amount to enough to be of importance by itself, but it served 
perhaps to fortify the basis of his generalizations about all early 
poetry. 

A review of the Life and Works of Chatterton gave Scott 
an opportunity to discuss the characteristics of Middle-English 
poetry, but his general thesis, that the Rowley poems exhibit 
graces and refinements which are in marked contrast to the 
tenuity of idea and tautology of expression found in genuine 
works of the period, is supported by an argument which 
seems to be based on a characterization of the romances 
rather than on a close acquaintance with other Middle- 
English poetry. We notice a similar quality in what Scott 
says elsewhere concerning Frere's translation into Chau- 
cerian English of the Battle of Brmianhurgh: " This appears 
to us an exquisite imitation of the antiquated English poetry, 
not depending on an accumulation of hard words like the lan- 
guage of Rowley, which in everything else is refined and har- 
monious poetry, nor upon an agglomeration of consonants in 
the orthography, the resource of later and more contemptible 
forgers, but upon the style itself, upon its alternate strength 
and weakness, now nervous and concise, now diffuse and 
eked out by the feeble aid of expletives."^ Of Middle- 
English poets other than Chaucer and the author or trans- 
lator of Sir Tristrem, Laurence Minot was the one to whom 
Scott alluded most frequently, doubtless because in Rit- 
son's edition of Minot that poet had become more accessible 
than most of his contemporaries. Whatever detailed work 
Scott did on the poetry of this period was chiefly in connection 
with Sir Tristrem, which has naturally been considered in rela- 
tion with his other studies in romances, 

^Review of Ellis's Specimens, Edinburgh Review, April, 1804. 



44 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

Scott's familiarity with Chaucer appears in his numerous 
quotations from that poet, but usually the passages are cited to 
illustrate mediaeval manners rather than for any specifically 
literary purpose. Yet there are Chaucer enthusiasts among the 
characters of Woodstock and Peveril of the Peak} Chaucer's 
fame was well enough established so that Scott seems on the 
whole to have taken his merit for granted, and not to have said 
much about it except in casual references.^ Among general 
readers he must have been comparatively little known, however, 
notwithstanding the respect paid him by scholars. In 1805 
we find Scott writing to Ellis that his scheme for editing a 
collection of the British Poets had fallen through, for, he said, 
" My plan was greatly too liberal to stand the least chance of 
being adopted by the trade at large, as I wished them to begin 
with Chaucer. The fact is, I never expected they would 
agree to it."^ 

Scott's review of Godwin's Life of Chancer, one of the best 
known of his periodical essa3^s, is altogether concerned with 
the manner in which Godwin did his work, and so exhibits 
Scott's ideas on the subject of biography and his methods of 
reviewing rather than his attitude towards Chaucer's poetry. 
His most definite remarks concerning Chaucer are to be found 
in his comments upon Dryden's Fables, as for example : " The 
Knight's Tale, whether we consider Chaucer's original poem, 
or the spirited and animated version of Dryden, is one of the 
best pieces of composition in our language " ;^ " Of all Chau- 
cer's multifarious powers, none is more wonderful than the 

1 Bletson and Richard Ganlesse. 

^ But see the dictum quoted by Scott in a somewhat over-emphatic way 
from Ellis's Specimens of the Early English Poets, to the effect that 
Chaucer's " peculiar ornaments of style, consisting in an affectation of 
splendour, and especially of latinity," were perhaps his special contribution 
to the improvement of English poetry. {Edinburgh Review, April, 1804.) 
Scott said of Dunbar, " This darling of the Scottish muses has been justly 
raised to a level with Chaucer by every judge of poetry to whom his obso- 
lete language has not rendered him unintelligible." {Memoir of Bannatyne, 
p. 14.) After naming the various qualities in which Dunbar was Chaucer's 
rival, he pronounces the Scottish poet inferior in the use of pathos. The 
relative position here assigned to the two poets seems to be rather an 
exaltation of Dunbar than a degradation of Chaucer. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 408. * Dryden, Vol. XI, p. 245. 



OTHER STUDIES IN MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 45 

humour with which he touched upon natural frailty, and the 
truth with which he describes the inward feelings of the human 
heart."^ Yet he once called Troilns and Criseyde " a some- 
what dull poem." The Cock and the Fox, on the other hand, 
he speaks of as " a poem which, in grave ironical narrative, 
liveliness of illustration, and happiness of humorous descrip- 
tion, yields to none that ever was written."^ 

In estimating the importance of Scott's studies on any one 
period we have to think of them as part of a greater whole. 
The wide range of his investigations would evidently make it 
impossible to expect a complete treatment of all the subjects 
he might choose to discuss, and we have found, in fact, that 
his criticism of mediaeval literature led to systematic results 
in no other lines than those of the ballad and the romance. 
But these were large and important matters. Moreover, to all 
that he wrote in connection with the Middle Ages there at- 
taches a special interest; for with that work he made his real 
start in literature ; and it reflected the peculiarly delightful 
vein in his own nature which was constant from youth to age, 
and which gave to his poems and novels some of their most 
brilliant qualities.^ 

^ Dry den. Vol. XI, p. 396. 

"^Ihid., Vol. VI, p. 243. 

^Ibid., Vol. XI, p. 338. 

*The discussion of popular superstitions given in the introduction to 
the Minstrelsy and in the Essay on Fairies, which is prefixed to the ballad 
of Young Tamlane, suggests comparison with the Letters on Demonology 
and Witchcraft which Scott wrote in the year before he died. He col- 
lected a remarkable library in regard to superstition, and thought at various 
times of making a book on the subject, but the project was pushed aside 
for other matters until 1831. The Letters which he wrote then are full 
of pleasant anecdote and judicious comment, and though they lack the vigor 
of his earlier work they have remained fairly popular. An edition of 
Kirk's Secret Commomvealth of Elves and Fairies, published in 1815, has 
been attributed to Scott. (See below, the Bibliography of books edited 
by Scott.) Reviews of his which have not been mentioned in this 
chapter, but which naturally connect themselves with the subjects here 
discussed, are the following: The Culloden Papers — an account of the 
Highland clans, largely narrative {Quarterly, January, i8i6) ; Ritson's 
Annals of the Caledonians, Picts and Scots — an article of more than forty 
pages, discussing the early history of Scotland and the historians who have 
written upon it (Quarterly, July, 1829) ; Tytler's History of Scotland — 
an article similar to that on Ritson's book (Quarterly, November, 1829) ; 



46 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

THE DRAMA 

Scott's fondness for the drama and his acquaintance with actors — 
His ideas about plot structure — His own dramatic experiments — 
His opinion of the theaters of his day — His knowledge of English 
dramatic literature — Familiarity with Elizabethan plays shown in his 
novels — His Essay on the Drama — Ancient drama — French drama — 
Dramatic unities — German drama — Elizabethan drama — Shakspere — 
Ben Jonson— Dryden and other Restoration dramatists — Morality 
of theater-going — Character of Scot,t's interest in the drama. 

Like most of his characteristics, Scott's taste for the theater 
was exhibited in his childhood. We find him reverting, in a 
review written in 1826,^ to his rapturous emotions on the occa- 
sion of seeing his first play ; and in the private theatricals 
which he and his brothers and sister performed in the family- 
dining-room he was always the manager. In 1810 he was ac- 
tive in helping to bring out in Edinburgh the Family Legend of 
his friend Joanna Baillie.^ One of the actors on that occasion 
was Daniel Terry,^ who became an intimate friend of Scott's. 
For Terry Scott wrote The Doom of Devorgoil, but the piece 

Pitcairn's Ancient Criminal Trials — a long article, which begins with an 
extended digression on booksellers and collectors and on the Roxburghe 
and Bannatyne clubs {Quarterly, February, 1831) ; Sibbald's Chronicle of 
Scottish Poetry — merely a series of notes on special points {Edinburgh 
Review, October, 1803) ; Southey's Chronicle of the Cid {Quarterly, Feb- 
ruary, 1809). For the Encyclopedia Britannica Scott wrote an essay on 
Chivalry, as well as the one on Romance to which reference has been 
made. 

1 Review of Kelly's Reminiscences and the Life of Kemble, Quarterly 
Review, June, 1826. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 97. 

^ Terry had been educated as an architect, and his knowledge and taste 
were of assistance to Scott in connection with the building and furnishing 
of Abbotsford. After 1812 he played chiefly in London. In 1816 his ver- 
sion of Guy Mannering, the first of his adaptations from Scott, was pre- 
sented. Before this he had taken the part of Roderick Dhu in two dra- 
matic versions of The Lady of the Lake. In 18 19 he was the iirst David 
Deans in his adaptation of The Heart of Midlothian. Six years later he 
became manager of the Adelphi theater, in association with F. H. Yates. 
At this time Scott became Terry's security for £1280, a sum which he 
was afterward obliged to pay with the addition of £500 for which the 
credit of James Ballantyne was pledged. When financial embarrassment 
caused Terry to retire from the management his mental and physical pow- 
ers gave way, and he died of paralysis in 1829. Terry admired Scott so 
much that he learned to imitate his facial expression, his speech and his 
handwriting. 



THE DRAMA 47 

was not found suitable for presentation. Several of the novels 
were more successfully dramatized by the same friend, so that 
we find the " Author " humorously complaining in the " Intro- 
ductory Epistle " to The Fortunes of Nigel, " I believe my 
muse would be Terryfied into treading the stage even if I 
should write a sermon." Among Scott's friends were several 
other actors, particularly Mrs. Siddons and her brother John 
Kemble, and the comedian Charles Mathews. In Scott's re- 
view of Kelly's Reminiscences and the Life of Kemble we find 
recorded many of the discriminations he was fond of making 
in regard to the talents of particular actors. 

In his childhood Scott felt well qualified to take the part 
of Richard III., for he considered that his limp " would do 
well enough to represent the hump."^ After a similar fashion 
we find him commenting on the improbabilities of the tragedy 
of Douglas: " But the spectator should, and indeed must, make 
considerable allowances if he expects to receive pleasure from 
the drama. He must get his mind, according to Tony Lump- 
kin's phrase, into ' a concatenation accordingly,'^ since he can- 
not reasonably expect that scenes of deep and complicated 
interest shall be placed before him, in close succession, without 
some force being put upon ordinary probability ; and the ques- 
tion is not, how far you have sacrificed your judgment in order 
to accommodate the fiction, but rather, what is the degree of 
delight you have received in return."^ 

Scott disclaimed any special knowledge of stage-craft. " I 
know as little about the division of a drama as the spinster 
about the division of a battle, to use lago's simile,"* he once 
wrote to a friend. Yet as a critic he had of course some gen- 
eral ideas about the making of plays, without having worked 
out any subtle theories on the subject. In criticising a play by 
Allan Cunningham, who had asked for his judgment on it, 

^Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 94. 

^The phrase, which was a favorite one of Scott's, is spoken not by 
Tony Lumpkin, but by one of his tavern companions. Scott's use of it 
is an indication of the way in which he was familiar with the drama. 
Very likely he never reread the play after his youth, but his strong memory 
doubtless retained a pretty definite impression of it. 

3 Review of the Life and Works of John Home, Quarterly, June, 1827. 

^Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 143. 



48 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

he remarked first that the plot was ill-combined. " If the 
mind can be kept upon one unbroken course of interest, the 
effect even in perusal is more gratifying. I have always con- 
sidered this as the great secret in dramatic poetry, and con- 
ceive it one of the most difficult exercises of the invention pos- 
sible, to conduct a story through five acts, developing it grad- 
ually in every scene, so as to keep up the attention, yet never 
till the very conclusion permitting the nature of the catastrophe 
to become visible, — and all the while to accompany this by the 
necessary delineation of character and beauty of language."^ 
And again he said to the same person, " I hope you will make 
another dramatic attempt; and in that case I would strongly 
recommend that you should previously make a model or skele- 
ton of your incidents, dividing them regularly into scenes and 
acts, so as to insure the dependence of one circumstance upon 
another, and the simplicity and union of your whole story."^ 
Here we find Scott giving advice which by his own admission 
he was not himself able to follow in the composition of fiction. 
" I never could lay down a plan, or having laid it down I never 
could adhere to it," he wrote in his journal.^ And the "Au- 
thor " in the introductory epistle to Nigel remarks, " It may 
pass for one good reason for not writing a play, that I cannot 
form a plot." 

The few experiments that he made he did not seem to regard 
seriously at any time, though he was rather favorably im- 
pressed on rereading the Doom of Devorgoil after it had lain 
unused for several years.* Of Halidon Hill he said, " It is 
designed to illustrate military antiquities and the manners of 
chivalry. The drama (if it can be called one) is in no par- 
ticular either designed or calculated for the stage. "^ He seems 

1 Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 427. It may be noted that this criticism does 
not show much dramatic insight. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. Ill, pp. 445-6. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 117; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 447. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 94; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 419. 

^ Advertisement to Halidon Hill. When the publisher Cadell " closed a 
bargain with Scott in five minutes for Halidon Hill, giving him £1000, he 
wrote as follows to his partner : " My views were these : here is a com- 
mencement of a series of dramatic writings — let us begin by buying them 
out." {Constable's Correspondence, Vol. Ill, p. 217.) 



THE DRAMA 49 

to have been " often urged " to write plays, if one may trust 
Captain Clutterbuck's authority, and the effectiveness of the 
many poetical mottoes improvised by the Author of Waverley 
for the chapters of his novels, and subscribed " Old Play," ^ 
was naturally used as an argument.^ Scott's own judgment 
on the matter was expressed thus : " Nothing so easy when 
you are full of an author, as to write a few lines in his taste 
and style ; the difficulty is to keep it up. Besides, the greatest 
success would be but a spiritless imitation, or, at best, what 
the Italians call a ccntone [sic] from Shakspeare."^ When 
Elliston became manager of Drury Lane in 1819 he applied to 
Scott for plays, but without effect.^ Scott seems never to 
have felt any concern over the fact that the dramatized ver- 
sions of his novels were often very poor, but Hazlitt wished 
that he would "not leave it to others to mar what he has 
sketched so admirably as a ground-work," for he saw no good 
reason why the author of Waverley could not write " a first- 
rate tragedy as well as so many first-rate novels."^ 

Scott felt that to write for the stage in his day was 
a thankless and almost degrading occupation. " Avowedly 
I will never write for the stage; if I do, 'call me horse.'" 
he said in a letter to Terry.^ Again in a letter to Southey: 
"I do not think the character of the audience in London is 
such that one could have the least pleasure in pleasing them. 
. . . On the whole, I would far rather write verses for mine 
honest friend Punch and his audience ";7 and to a would-be 
tragedian he said : " In the present day there is only one reason 
which seems to me adequate for the encountering the plague 
of trying to please a set of conceited performers and a very 
motley audience,— I mean the want of money."^ This de- 
graded condition of the London stage Scott thought to be a 
consequence of limiting the number of theaters. We can 

i"That well-written, but very didactic 'Old Play'," as Adolphus calls 
it. {Letters to Heber, p. 55.) 

2 Introductory epistle to Nigel. ^Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 414. 

* Fitzgerald's New History of the English Stage, Vol. II, p. 404. 
^Dramatic Essays, Hazlitt's Works, Vol. VIII, p. 422. 
^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 176. Ubid., Vol. Ill, p. 265. 

^Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 332. 

4 



50 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

hardly suppose, however, that he was pessimistic in regard 
to the written drama of his day, when he could say of 
Byron, "There is one who, to judge from the dramatic sketch 
he has given us in Manfred, must be considered as a match 
for Aeschylus, even in his sublimest moods of horror " ;^ or 
when he could place Joanna Baillie in the same class with 
Shakspere.^ 

Scott probably did much reading in the drama in his early 
life. We know that by 1804 he had " long since " annotated 
his copy of Beaumont and Fletcher sufficiently so that he 
wished to offer it to Gifford, who, Scott erroneously under- 
stood, was about to edit their dramas.^ The edition of 
Dry den, published in 1808, shows familiarity with Elizabethan 
as well as Restoration dramatists. He seems to have had first- 
hand knowledge of such men as Ford, Webster, Marston, 
Brome, Shirley, Chapman, and Dekker, whom he mentions as 
being " little known to the general readers of the present day, 
even by name.''* But 1808 was the very year in which ap- 

^ Essay on the Drama. 

^ In 1808 he wrote to a friend: "We have Miss Baillie here at present, 
who is certainly the best dramatic writer whom Britain has produced since 
the days of Shakspeare and Massinger." (Fam. Let., Vol. I, p. 99.) But 
Wilson also put Joanna Baillie next to Shakspere, and quite seriously. 
The article in the Dictionary of National Biography on Joanna Baillie says 
that when the first volume of Plays on the Passions was published anony- 
mously in 1798, Walter Scott was at first suspected of being the author. 
But as Scott had done nothing to give him a literary reputation in 1798, 
the assertion is incredible. It seems to be based on the following very 
inexact statement in Chambers's Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scots- 
men. (Vol. V, Art. Joanna Baillie.) " Rich though the period was in 
poetry, this work made a great impression, and a new edition of it was 
soon required. The writer was sought for among the most gifted person- 
ages of the day, and the illustrious Scott, with others then equally appre- 
ciated, was suspected as the author." 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 380. 

*Life of Dryden, ch. I. In Guy Mannering and The Antiquary , the first 
two novels in which Scott habitually used mottoes to head his chapters, 
most of the selections are from plays. Eighteen plays of Shakspere are 
represented by twenty-nine quotations. Other mottoes are from The Merry 
Devil of Edmonton, from Jonson, from Fletcher {The Little French Law- 
yer, Women Pleased, The Fair Maid of the Inn, The Beggar's Bush), from 
Brome, Dekker, Middleton and Rowley, Cartwright, Otway, Southerne, 
The Beggar's Opera, Walpole's Mysterious Mother, The Critic, Chronon- 
hotonthologos, Joanna Baillie. For the latter part of The Antiquary many 



THE DRAMA 51 

peared Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets and Cole- 
ridge's first course of lectures on Shakspere. The old drama- 
tists were beginning to come to their own, through the sympa- 
thetic appreciation of the Romantic critics. Scott never refers, 
however, to the work of Lamb, Coleridge, or Hazlitt* in this 
field, and we conclude that his researches in dramatic literature 
were the recreation of a man who realized that his business lay 
in another direction. But in preparing the Dryden, he doubt- 
less read more widely in Restoration drama than he would 
otherwise have done. Throughout his life he continued to 
read plays at intervals, as we know from occasional refer- 
ences in the Journal; but after the Dryden appeared we can 
point to no time in his career when such reading was his espe- 
cial occupation. His familiarity with Elizabethan drama he 
showed even more emphatically than by serious critical writ- 
ings on the subject, in his fragments from mythical " Old 
Plays," - in his frequent references to single plays, and 
in the substance of some of the novels, particularly The 
Fortunes of Nigel and Woodstock, which make use of settings, 
situations, and characterizations suggested by the drama. ^ 
Mr. Lang says of The Fortunes of Nigel, " The scenes in 
Alsatia are a distinct gain to literature, a pearl rescued from 
the unread mass of Shadwell."'' 

of the mottoes were composed by Scott himself. Kenilworth presents a 
similar list, with some variations : Jonson's Masque of Owls was used, 
more than one play by Beaumont and Fletcher, Waldron's Virgin Queen, 
Wallenstein, and Douglas. In St. Roman's Well there is a larger propor- 
tion of non-dramatic mottoes, as in most of the later novels, but we find 
represented nine of Shakspere's plays and one of Beaumont and Fletcher's. 
The Legend of Montrose (chapter XIV) has a motto from Suckling's Bren- 
noralt. In Anne of Geierstein ten of Shakspere's plays were drawn upon, 
and Manfred was twice used. Scott made his chapters much longer in 
these later novels, and used fewer mottoes, but the evidence of the selec- 
tions would seem to indicate that he had lost something of his early 
familiarity with dramatic literature. 

^ Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespeare's Plays appeared in 1817; his Lec- 
tures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Queen Elizabeth in 1821. 

^ Scott first began to fabricate occasional mottoes for his chapters dur- 
ing the composition of The Antiquary in 1816. 

^ Saintsbury in Macmillan's Magazine, Ixx : 323. Scott's style in many 
passages is strongly colored by the influence of Shakspere. 

* Introduction by Lang to The Fortunes of Nigel. 



52 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

His serious critical writings on the subject comprise little 
else than his Essay on the Drama, which appeared in the sup- 
plement to the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1819, and 
the discussions given in connection with Dryden's plays. ^ 
Although the Essay was written ten years later than the 
Dryden, we have no reason to think that Scott changed his 

1 It is possible that among the various jobs of editing undertaken by 
Scott with a view to keeping the Ballantyne types busy, were certain col- 
lections of dramas. Ancient British Drama, in three volumes, and Modern 
British Drama, in five volumes, published in 1810 and 1811, are sometimes 
attributed to Scott in library catalogues, but on what authority it seems 
impossible to discover. There is almost no commentary in the Ancient 
British Drama, but the Modern British Drama contains three brief intro- 
ductions which I believe were written by Scott. They show a striking 
likeness to some parts of the Essay on the Drama written several years 
later, and it is not probable that Scott took his criticism ready-made from 
another author. In the preface to the Ancient British Drama we find this 
statement : " The present publication is intended to form, with The British 
Drama and Shakspeare, a complete and uniform collection in ten volumes 
of the best English plays." The Shakspeare here referred to is doubtless 
that of which Constable the publisher afterwards spoke in his correspond- 
ence with Scott as " Ballantyne's Shakespeare," and Scott had no hand in 
the editorship. {Constable's Correspondence, Vol. Ill, p. 244.) 

It is true, however, as R. S. Mackenzie says in his Life of Scott, that 
Scott " had not only meditated, but partly executed an edition of Shakes- 
peare." The work was suggested by Constable in 1822, was begun in 1823 
or 1824, and three volumes of the proposed ten were printed by the time 
of Constable's financial crash in the beginning of 1826. The project was 
sometime afterwards abandoned, and the printed sheets, which apparently 
were not bound up, disappeared from view. The first volume was to be 
a life of Shakspere by Scott, and this was probably not begun at all. Of 
the commentary in the other volumes, Scott was to have the oversight 
but Lockhart was to do most of the work. It was not designed that the 
critical apparatus should to any great degree represent original ideas fur- 
nished by Lockhart or Scott, but the book was to be " a sensible Shakes- 
peare, in which the useful and readable notes should be condensed and 
separated from the trash." (See the discussion of the matter in letters 
between Scott and his publisher given in the third volume of Constable's 
Correspondence. See also Lang's Life of Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 409, and 
Vol. II, p. 13, and Mackenzie's Life of Scott, pp. 475-6.) The Boston 
Public Library contains three volumes which are thought to be a unique 
copy of so much of the Scott-Lockhart Shakspere as was printed. (See 
below, the Bibliography of books edited by Scott.) 

Scott's notes on Beaumont and Fletcher, which he had wished in 1804 
to offer to Gifford, were actually used by Weber in his Beaumont and 
Fletcher, published about 1810, an edition which was characterized by 
Scott as " too carelessly done to be reputable." {Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 
472.) 



THE DRAMA 53 

views or added greatly to his knowledge in the interval, and 
using these two sources we may discuss his account of the 
drama in general without regard to the particular date at 
which his opinions were expressed. 

His exposition in the Essay on the Drama rested on the 
basis furnished by a historical study of the stage. He did not, 
of course, pretend to have formed his own conclusions on all 
points, and we find him quoting from various authorities, some- 
times naming them and sometimes only indicating, perhaps, 
that he was " abridging from the best antiquaries." This, 
however, was chiefly in connection with the ancient drama. As 
I have already remarked, we do not find him referring to 
recent studies on the English drama. And though Scott had 
forgotten all his Greek we observe that he is bold enough to 
disagree with " the ingenious Schlegel " in regard to the com- 
parative value of the Greek New Comedy. In his treatment 
of the ancient drama the main point for note is the success 
with which he gives a broad and connected view of the sub- 
ject. His account of the drama in France needs correction 
in certain respects,^ but it seems to indicate some first-hand 
knowledge and very definite opinions. He quotes Moliere fre- 
quently throughout his writings, and always speaks of him 
with admiration; but with no other French dramatist does he 
seem to have been familiar to such a degree. Judging French 
tragic poets too much from the Shaksperian point of view, he 
was not prepared to do them justice.^ On the dramatic unities, 
of which he remarked, " Aristotle says so little and his com- 
mentators and followers talk so much," Scott wrote, here and 
elsewhere, with decision and vivacity. The unities of time and 
place he calls " fopperies," though time and place, he admits, 
are not to be lightly changed.^ He connects the whole discus- 
sion with the study of theatrical conditions, and never bows 

^ He seems to have connected heroic plays too closely with " the romances 
of Calprenede and Scuderi." See his introduction to The Indian Emperor, 
Dryden, Vol. II, pp. 317-20; also Vol. I, p. 56, and Vol. VI, p. 125. On 
his opinion in regard to the relation between novels and plays see below, 
pp. 75-6. 

2 See his comment on Corneille's Oedipe, Dryden, Vol. VI, p. 125, and 
Mr. Saintsbury's note. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 446. 



54 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

down to authority as such. He says, " Surely it is of less 
consequence merely to ascertain what was the practice of the 
ancients, than to consider how far such practice is founded 
upon truth, good taste, and general effect " ; and again, " Aris- 
totle would probably have formulated different rules if he had 
written in our time." And though he adopted and applied 
to the drama the Horatian dictum that the end of poetry is to 
instruct and delight, it was not because Horace and a long line of 
critics had said it, but because he thought it was true. Doubtless 
his phrase would have been different if he had not taken what 
was lying nearest, but his habit was never carefully to avoid 
the common phrase. His general opinion of French drama 
was decidedly unfavorable, and he thought it was doubtful 
whether their plays would ever be any nearer to nature. " That 
nation," he observes calmly, " is so unfortunate as to have no 
poetical language." 

His remarks on German drama are general in character, 
though we know that in his early days he was much interested 
in translating contemporary German plays. His version of 
Goethe's Goets von Berlichingen was the most important of 
these translations. A letter of Scott's contains the following 
reference to this play •} " The publication of Goetz was a great 
era ... in German literature, and served completely to free 
them from the French follies of unities and decencies of the 
scene, and gave an impulse to their dramas which was unique 
of its kind. Since that, they have been often stark mad but 
never, I think, stupid. They either divert you by taking the 
most brilliant leaps through the hoop, or else by tumbling into 
the custard, as the newspapers averred the Champion did at 
the Lord Mayor's dinner." 

When he is on English ground we can best trace Scott's 
individual opinions, yet even here he reflects some of the limi- 
tations of the less enlightened scholarship of his time, espe- 
cially in connection with early Elizabethan writers. He passes 
from Ferrex and Porrex^ and Gammer Gurton's Needle di- 

^ Hutchinson's Letters of Scott, p. 224. 

^ That Scott admired Sackville greatly is evident from more than one 
comment. Of Ferrex and Porrex he says, " In Sackville's part of the play. 



THE DRAMA 55 

rectly to Shakspere, and quite omits Marlowe and the other 
immediate predecessors. He was not ignorant of their exist- 
ence, for against a statement of Dryden's that Shakspere was 
the first to use blank verse we find in Scott's edition the note, — 
" This is a mistake. Marlowe and several other dramatic 
authors used blank verse before the days of Shakespeare " ;-^ 
and one of his youthful notebooks contains this comment on 
Faustus: " A very remarkable thing. Grand subject — end 
grand. "2 In 183 1 Scott intended to write an article for the 
Quarterly Review on Peele, Greene, and Webster, and in asking 
Alexander Dyce to have Webster's works sent to him he said, 
" Marlowe and others I have, — and some acquaintance with 
the subject, though not much."^ Webster he considered "one 
of the best of our ancient dramatists." The proposed article 
was never written, because of Scott's final illness. 

In spite of his statement that " the English stage might be 
considered equally without rule and without model when 
Shakspeare arose," Scott did not seem inclined to leave the 
great man altogether unaccounted for, as some critics have 
preferred to do, for he says, " The efifect of the genius of an 
individual upon the taste of a nation is mighty ; but that genius 
in its turn is formed according to the opinions prevalent at the 
period when it comes into existence." These opinions, how- 
ever, Scott assigns very vaguely to the influence of " a nameless 
crowd of obscure writers," and thinks it fortunate that Shaks- 
pere was unacquainted with classical rules. The critic had evi- 
dently made no attempt to define the influence of particular 
writers upon Shakspere. His criticism is at some points purely 
conventional, as for instance when he calls the poet " that pow- 
erful magician, whose art could fascinate us even by means of 
deformity itself " ; but on the whole Scott seems to write about 
Shakspere in a very reasonable and discriminating way. 

which comprehends the two last acts, there is some poetry worthy of the 
author of the sublime Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates." (Dryden, 
Vol. II, p. 135.) Elsewhere Scott calls Sackville "a beautiful poet." 
(Fragmenta Regalia, p. 277. Secret History of the Court of James I., Vol. 
I, p. 278, note.) 

^Dryden, Vol. II, p. 136. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 229. See also Vol. Ill, p. 223. 

''Ibid., Vol. V, p. 322. 



56 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

He has a good deal to say of Ben Jonson, in other places as 
well as in this Essay on the Drama. ^ He was evidently well 
acquainted with that poet, and admired him without liking 
him. Somewhere he calls him " the dry and dogged Jonson,"^ 
and again he speaks of his genius in very high terms. The 
contrast between Shakspere and Jonson moved him even to 
epigram :^ " In reading Shakespeare we often meet passages so 
congenial to our nature and feelings that, beautiful as they 
are, we can hardly help wondering they did not occur to our- 
selves; in studying Jonson, we have often to marvel how his 
conceptions could have occurred to any human being." It was 
characteristic of Scott to note the fact that Shakspere wrote 
rapidly, Jonson slowly, for he was fond of getting support for 
his theory that rapid writing is the better. 

As early as 1804 Scott referred to The Changeling as "an 
old play which contains some passages horribly striking,"* and 
in so doing voiced, as Mr. Swinburne says, " the first word of 
modern tribute to the tragic genius of Thomas Middleton."® 
Scott also praised Massinger highly, especially for his strength 
in characterization, and once called him " the most gentleman- 
like of all the old English dramatists."^ He discussed Beau- 
mont and Fletcher sympathetically, for he knew them well and 
frequently quoted from them. He named Shirley, Ford, Web- 
ster, and Dekker in a group, and spoke of the singular profu- 
sion of talents devoted in this period to the writing of plays, 
an observation which is made more explicitly later in the 
Journal, when he has just been reading an old play which, he 
says, " worthless in the extreme, is, like many of the plays in 
the beginning of the seventeenth century, written to a good 
tune. The dramatic poets of that time seem to have possessed 
as joint-stock a highly poetical and abstract tone of language, 
so that the worst of them often remind you of the very best."^ 

^ See, for example, Hawthornden, in Provincial Antiquities. 
^ Dry den, Vol. XV, p. 337. ^ Ibid., Vol. I, p. 10. 

* Note on Sir Tristrem, Fytte II., stanza 56. 

^ See Middleton's Plays in the Mermaid edition : Introduction, Vol. I, 
pp. viii-ix. 

^ Ticknor, in Allibone's Dictionary, Vol. II, p. 1968. 
' Journal, Vol. I, p. 234 ; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 23. 



THE DRAMA 57 

This circumstance he accounts for by a reference to the au- 
diences, and this in turn he seems to ascribe partly to the 
great number of theaters then open in London. He dwells so 
much on the evils of limiting the number of play-houses to 
two or three, that we may fairly consider it one of his hobbies, 
and it is possible that he had some slight influence toward 
increasing that public opposition to the theatrical monopoly 
which finally, in 1843, resulted in the nullification of the 
patents. 

Scott's discussion of Restoration drama is admirably vigor- 
ous and clear. He probably simplified the matter too much at 
some points, indeed, as for example in over-estimating the 
influence exerted upon the stage by Charles H. and his French 
tastes, and in tracing the origin of the French drama to ro- 
mances. But in general his facts are right and his deductions 
fair. Mr. Saintsbury has accused him of depreciating Dryden's 
plays, especially the comedies, out of disgust at their indecency ; 
yet in judging the period as a whole he seems to discriminate 
sufficiently between indelicacy and dulness. "The talents of 
Otway," he says, " in his scenes of passionate affection rival, 
at least, and sometimes excel those of Shakspeare." Again: 
" The comedies of Congreve contain probably more wit than 
was ever before embodied upon the stage ; each word was a 
jest, and yet so characteristic that the repartee of the servant 
is distinguished from that of the master; the jest of the cox- 
comb from that of the humorist or fine gentleman of the 
piece." Lesser writers of the time are also sympathetically 
characterized, — Shadwell, for instance, whom he thought 
to be commonly underestimated.^ The heroic play Scott dis- 
cussed vivaciously in more than one connection, for, as we 
should expect, his sense of humor found its absurdities tempt- 
ing.^ On the rant in the Conquest of Granada he remarked, 
" Dryden's apology for these extravagances seems to be that 
Almanzor is in a passion. But although talking nonsense is a 

1 See Scott's article on Moliere, Foreign Quarterly Review, February, 
1828. 

^ Essay on Drama; Dryden, Vol. I, p. loi ff.. Vol. II, pp. 317-20, Vol. IV, 
p. 4. 



68 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

common effect of passion, it seems hardly one of those conse- 
quences adapted to show forth the character of a hero in 
theatrical representation."^ Scott's opinion of the form of 
these plays appears in the following comment : " We doubt 
if, with his utmost efforts, [Moliere] could have been abso- 
lutely dull, without the assistance of a pastoral subject and 
heroic measure."^ Concerning the indecency of the literature 
of the period Scott wrote emphatically. He was much troubled 
by the problem of whether to publish Dryden's works without 
any cutting, and came near taking Ellis's advice to omit some 
portions, but he finally adhered to his original determination: 
" In making an edition of a man of genius's works for libraries 
and collections ... I must give my author as I find him, and 
will not tear out the page, even to get rid of the blot, little as 
I like it."3 

The question of the morality of theater-going was one Scott 
felt obliged to discuss when he was writing upon the drama. 
He found its vindication, characteristically, in a universal 
human trait, — the impulse toward mimicry and impersonation, 
— and in the good results that may be supposed to attend it. 
In naming these he lays what seems like undue stress on the 
teaching of history by the drama, in language that might quite 
as well be applied to historical novels. His argument on the 
literary side also is stated in a somewhat too sweeping way : — 
" Had there been no drama, Shakespeare would, in all likeli- 
hood, have been but the author of Venus and Adonis and of a 
few sonnets forgotten among the numerous works of the Eliza- 
bethan age, and Otway had been only the compiler of fantastic 
odes."* A final plea, in favor of the stage as a democratic 
agency — though this of course is not Scott's phrasing — seems 
slightly unusual for him, although not essentially out of char- 
acter. " The entertainment," he says, " which is the subject 
of general enjoyment, is of a nature which tends to soften, 
if not to level, the distinction of ranks. "^ In another mood he 

1 Dry den, Vol. IV, p. 4. 

^Article on Moliere, Foreign Quarterly Review, February, 1828. 
^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 431. 

* Review of Kelly's Reminiscences and the Life of Kemble, Quarterly 
Review, June, 1826. 
^Ibid. 



DRYDEN 59 

admitted the greater likelihood that immoral plays would injure 
the public character than that moral plays would elevate it.^ 

It is sufficiently apparent to any student of Scott's work that 
he was personally very fond of the drama. Many of the lit- 
erary references and allusions which appear in great abundance 
throughout his writings are from plays, and show, as we have 
seen, a wide acquaintance with English dramatic writers, from 
Shakspere to such comparatively little-known playwrights as 
Suckling and Cowley. In the Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 
on the Currency, for example, Scott's unusual range of read- 
ing reveals itself even in connection with a subject remote from 
his ordinary field, and here as elsewhere he shows himself prone 
to quote from the drama.^ But Scott was interested in plays 
for what he found in them of characters and manners, of 
witty and sententious speech, of situations and incidents, and 
only secondarily in the technical aspects of the drama. Read- 
ing his novels we could guess that he would care more for 
the concrete elements of a play than for the orderly march 
of events through the various stages of a formally proper con- 
struction. In this respect he differs from Coleridge ; but indeed 
the two men may be contrasted at almost every point. In 
summing up this part of Scott's criticism we must remember 
also that it was chiefly incidental. Perhaps whatever qualities 
it exhibits are on this account particularly characteristic: at 
any rate his opinions on the drama were the reaction of ^n 
unusually capable mind upon a department of literature in 
which his reading was all the more fruitful because it fol- 
lowed the lines of a natural inclination. 

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Dryden 

Scott's preparations for his edition of Dryden — Wide Scope of the 
work — Scott's estimation of Dryden — Grounds for putting Dryden 
above Chaucer and Spenser — Admirable style of the biography — Com- 
ments by Scott on other seventeenth century vi^riters. 

The edition of Dryden's Complete Works deserves further 
notice, especially since only eight of the eighteen volumes are 

^Dryden, Vol. VI, p. 128. 

^ In Provincial Antiquities (Borthwick Castle), Scott cites parallels from 
Sir John Oldcastle, The Pinner of Wakefield, and one of Nash's pamphlets, 
for a curious incident in Scottish history. 



60 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

occupied with the plays, and these have less commentary than 
other parts of the works. In 1805 Scott wrote to his friend, 
George Ellis, " My critical notes will not be very numerous, 
but I hope to illustrate the political poems, as Absalom and 
Achitophel, the Hind and Panther, etc., with some curious 
annotations. I have already made a complete search among 
some hundred pamphlets of that pamphlet-writing age, and 
with considerable success, as I have found several which throw 
light on my author."^ He added that another edition of 
Dryden was proposed, and Ellis wrote in answer, " With re- 
gard to your competitors, I feel perfectly at my ease, because 
I am convinced that though you should generously furnish them 
with all the materials, they would not know how to use them; 
non cuivis hominum contingit to write critical notes that anyone 
will read."^ 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 431. This search among seventeenth century 
pamphlets may have suggested to Scott the need of a new edition of 
Somers' Tracts. Apparently he arranged with the publishers in 1807 to 
undertake this task, but the first volume did not appear till 1809. {Lock- 
hart, Vol. II, p. 10, and see below, pp. 89-90, for an account of Scott's 
edition of the Tracts.) Some of his materials for the Dryden were taken 
from this collection, but more from the Luttrell collection, to which he 
refers in the Advertisement. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 433. Scott's Dryden appeared in 1808, and with 
some slight changes in 1821 ; as reedited by Mr. Saintsbury it was pub- 
lished in 1 882-1 893. It was the first complete and uniform edition of 
Dryden's works, and it remains the only one. The dramatic works had 
appeared in folio in 1701. They were edited by Congreve in 171 7, and 
Scott used Congreve's text. The non-dramatic poems were also published 
in 1 701 in folio. They appeared in more convenient forms in 1741, 1743, 
and 1760, but of these editions only the last was reasonably complete. 
In 1800 the Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works were edited by Malone, 
who added a Life of Dryden which has furnished a large part of the 
material used by biographers since his time. This biography was badly 
written, but with Johnson's brilliant essay it was the only Life of Dryden 
before Scott's that was worth considering. An edition of Dryden's poems, 
with notes by Joseph Warton and others, appeared in 181 1, but seems to 
have been prepared before Scott's edition was published. The text of this 
is very incorrect. Since then the non-dramatic poems have been published 
several times. Mr. Christie said in his preface to the Globe edition : " Sir 
Walter Scott's is the last important edition of Dryden, as it is indeed 
still the only general collection of his works ; and it is to be regretted 
that that distinguished man did not give as much pains to the purification 
of Dryden's text as he did to his excellent biography and to the notes 
which enrich the edition." 



DRYDEN 61 

When Scott's Dry den was reedited and reissued in 1882-93 
by Professor Saintsbury, the new editor said : " It certainly 
deserves the credit of being one of the best-edited books on a 
great scale in English, save in one particular, — the revision of 
the text."^ The elaborate historical notes are left untouched, 
as being " in general thoroughly trustworthy,"^ though the 
editor considers them somewhat excessive, especially as some- 
times containing illustrative material from perfectly worthless 
contemporaries. On the other hand, the " explanation of word 
and phrase is a little defective,"^ 

The most notable quality of the Life of Dryden which com- 
poses the first of the eighteen volumes is its breadth of scope. 
Scott's aim may best be given in his own words in the Adver- 
tisement : " The general critical view of Dryden's works being 
sketched by Johnson with unequalled felicity, and the incidents 
of his life accurately discussed and ascertained by Malone, 
something seemed to remain for him who should consider these 
literary productions in their succession, as actuated by, and 
operating upon, the taste of an age where they had so pre- 
dominant influence ; and who might, at the same time, connect 
the life of Dryden with the history of his publications, without 
losing sight of the fate and character of the individual."* 

Errors of judgment appear in places ; sometimes they are 
due to the imperfect scholarship of the time ; sometimes they 
arise from prejudices of Scott's own. In the very first chapter 
we find him condemning Lyly and all writers of " conceited " 
language — particularly of course the Metaphysicals — with a 
thoroughness that a truly catholic critic ought probably to 
avoid. Scott had a constitutional dislike for a labored style, 
and at the same time a fondness for the direct and straight- 
forward way of looking at things. So, though he was open 

^ Editor's Preface. 

^Dryden, Vol. IX, p. 226. 

^Ibid., Vol. IX, p. 2. 

*In this connection Scott's review of Todd's edition of Spenser is inter- 
esting. He takes exception to the lack of an appearance of continuity in 
the biography, caused by the long quotations included in the body of the 
narrative ; and censures the editor for not having used the history of Italian 
poetry in elucidating Spenser's work. {Edinburgh Revieiv, October, 1805.) 



62 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

to the emotional appeal of a poem like Christahel, he took no 
pleasure in the devious processes by which the cold intellect 
has sometimes tried to give fresh interest to familiar words 
and ideas. They quite prevented him from seeing the passion 
in the work of Donne, for example, and he considered all meta- 
physical poets, in so far as they showed the traits of their class, 
to be without poetical feeling. 

Scott placed Dryden after Shakspere and Milton as third in 
the list of English writers. I think he would even have been 
willing to say that Dryden was the third as a poet. For greatly 
as he admired Chaucer, Scott did not feel Chaucer's full power, 
and indeed it was only beginning to be possible to read Chaucer 
with any appreciation of his metrical excellence. Spenser, of 
whom he once wrote : " No author, perhaps, ever possessed and 
combined in so brilliant a degree the requisite qualities of a 
poet," ^ was more of a favorite with Scott than Chaucer. 
But at another time he spoke of Drayton as possessing perhaps 
equal powers of poetry,^ and he seems to have felt that Spenser 
becomes tedious through the continued use of his difficult 
stanza and even more because of the " languor of a continued 
allegory."^ In comparing his judgments on Spenser and 
Dryden we may conclude that the critic found more in the 
later poet of that solid intellectual basis which he emphasizes 
in characterizing him. " This power of ratiocination," says 
Scott, " of investigating, discovering, and appreciating that 
which is really excellent, if accompanied with the necessary 
command of fanciful illustration and elegant expression, is the 
most interesting quality which can be possessed by a poet."^ 
Again he lays emphasis on Dryden's versatility, — greater, he 
says, than that of Shakspere and Milton. In Old Mortality 
Dryden is referred to as " the great High-priest of all the 
Nine." Scott would have called this another point of his 
superiority over Spenser, if he had made the comparison. 

Yet he saw Dryden's deficiencies. " It was a consequence of 
his mental acuteness that his dramatic personages often philoso- 

^ Review of Todd's Spenser. 

^Dryden, Vol. I, p. 6. 

* Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 229 ; and Dryden, Vol. I, p. 6. 

^Dryden, Vol. I, pp. 402-3. 



DRYDEN 63 

phized and reasoned when they ought only to have felt/'^ Scott 
remarks, and he frequently deplores Dryden's failure " in ex- 
pressing the milder and more tender passions. "^ Of Dryden's 
great gift of style, Scott speaks in the highest terms. " With this 
power," he says, " Dryden's poetry was gifted in a degree sur- 
passing in modulated harmony that of all who had preceded 
him, and inferior to none that has since written English verse 
[sic] . He first showed " — and here we see Scott's eighteenth- 
century affinities — " that the English language was capable of 
uniting smoothness and strength."^ 

Such criticism as Scott gives on specific parts of Dryden's 
work is clear-cut, fair for the most part, and has the sanity and 
reasonableness which are the most noticeable qualities of his 
criticism in general. It would be easier to find illustrations of 
shrewdness than of subtlety among his notes, but his discrimi- 
nations are often effective and satisfying. His discussion, for 
example, of prologues and epilogues considered in relation to 
the theatrical conditions which determined their character is 
admirable.* A note on "the cant of supposing that the Iliad 
contained an obvious and intentional moral '"' is also full of 
sense and vigor, but these qualities are so thoroughly diffused 
through the work that there is no need of particularizing. His 
praise of Alexander's Feast may be referred to, however, as 
showing his characteristic delight in objective poetry.^ As a 
lyric poet, he says, Dryden " must be allowed to have no equal."^ 

^ Dryden, Vol. I, p. 403. 

''Ibid., p. 404. Mr. Saintsbury thinks that Scott's prefatory introductions 
to the plays are often " both meagre and depreciatory " ; also that Scott's 
judgment on Dryden's letters is rather harsh, for him, and that after he 
had begun to write novels he would not have been so impatient of remarks 
on " turkeys, marrow-puddings, and bacon." 

^Ibid., Vol. I, p. 405. ^Ibid., Vol. XIV, pp. 136 and 146. 

*Ibid., Vol. X, p. 307 ff. ^Ibid., Vol. I, p. 405. 

'' In order to give a more specific view of Scott's methods, two or three 
of the introductions to well-known poems may be briefly analysed. The 
introduction to Absalom and Achitophel occupies ii>4 pages, of which 
about 2^/2 are given to quotation from a tract which Scott thought fur- 
nished the argument to Dryden, and which was unnoticed by any former 
commentator. Scott's remarks follow this outline : Position of the poem 
in literature, and history of its composition ; origin of the particular 
allegory as applied to modern politics ; a parallel use of the allegory (with 
a quotation from Somers' Tracts in illustrations) ; aptness of the allegory ; 



64 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

The peculiarly congenial qualities of the subject may have 
had something to do with the fact that the style in which the 
Life of Dryden is written is noticeably better than that of 
Scott's ordinary work. It is marked with a care and accuracy 
that were not, unfortunately, habitual to him. Perhaps it was 
an advantage that when he wrote the book he had not yet 
become altogether familiar with his own facility; certainly the 
substance and the manner of treatment unite in making this 
the most important of his critical biographies. 

Various references indicate that Scott was acquainted in at 
least a general way with English writers throughout the whole 
of Dryden's century. He speaks of the poems of Phineas 
Fletcher as containing " many passages fully equal to Spenser " y^ 
he says that Cowley " is now . . . undeservedly forgotten " f 
he calls Hudibras " the most witty poem that ever was written,"^ 
but says, " the perpetual scintillation of Butler's wit is too daz- 
zling to be delightful";* he talks of Waller and quotes from 
him;^ he refers to the charming quality of Isaac Walton's 

merits of the satire — treatment of Monmouth and other main characters ; 
changes in the second edition to mitigate the satire ; characterization of 
the poem as having few flights of imagination but much correctness of 
taste as well as fire and spirit; other objections by Johnson refuted; suc- 
cess of the poem ; history of the first publication and of the replies and 
congratulatory poems ; editions, and Latin versions. The notes on this 
poem are historical and very full, but the introduction contains as much 
literary as historical comment. Religio Laid is prefaced by 8 pages 
of introduction, in which are discussed the motive of the writing, the 
argument, the title, the purpose of the poem, and its reputation. Dryden's 
style in didactic poetry is compared with Cowper's, to the disadvantage of 
the later poet. The introduction to The Hind and the Panther is 20 pages 
long, and discusses the history of the period as well as the argument of 
the poem, its style, the subject of fables in general, and the effects the 
poem produced. The notes on this poem are copious. As he discussed 
the Fables in the Life of Dryden, Scott gave them no general introduction, 
and for each poem he wrote only a slight preface, telling something of the 
source and pointing out special beauties. His notes vary greatly in abund- 
ance. Those on Palamon and Arcite, e. g., are brief, explaining terms of 
chivalry and heraldry, but not giving literary or linguistic comment. 

"■Dryden, Vol. XIII, p. 324. ^ Ibid., Vol. X, p. 213. 

-Ibid., VoL XII, p. 20. Ubid., Vol. I, p. 411. 

^Ibid., Vol. I, p. 98. See also St. Ronan's Well, Vol. I, p. 105, and 
various mottoes in the novels. The edition of the novels used for refer- 
ence is that published in Edinburgh (1867) in 48 volumes. 



SWIFT 65 

work;^ and he adopts Samuel Pepys as a familiar acquaint- 
ance.^ These references occur mostly in the Dryden or in the 
novels, and we may conclude that the work for the Dryden 
gathered up and strengthened all Scott's acquaintance with the 
literature of the seventeenth century, from Shakspere and 
Milton down to writers of altogether minor importance ; and 
gave him material for many of the allusions that appear in his 
later work. It is probably true that there are more quotations 
from Dryden in Scott's books than from any other one author,^ 
though lines from Shakspere occurred more often in his con- 
versation and familiar letters. 

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

Swift 

The preparation of Swift's Complete Works — Comparison of the 
Dryden and the Swift — The bibliographical problem presented by 
Swift's works — Inaccuracies in the biography — Scott's success in por- 
traying a perplexing temperament — Judicious quality of his literary 
criticism. 

As soon as the Dryden was completed Scott was offered 
twice as much money as he had received for that work, for a 
similar edition of Swift.* He readily undertook the task, and 
in the midst of many other editorial engagements set to work 
upon it. The preparation of the book extended over the six 
years during which Scott ran the greater part of his poetical 
career. On its appearance one of his friends expressed the 

^ Dryden, Vol. X, p. 26. 

^ For example see Anne of Geierstein, Vol. II, p. 307. 

^ Letters to Heber, p. 292. 

* The price offered for the Swift was £1500. This must have been a 
rather rash speculation on the publisher's part, as there had been several 
editions of Swift's works published. The first appeared in twelve volumes 
in 1755, edited by Hawkesworth. Deane Swift, Hawkesworth, and others, 
added thirteen more volumes in the course of the next twenty-five years, 
and when the whole was completed it was reissued in three different sizes. 
In 1785 an edition in seventeen volumes was published, edited by Thomas 
Sheridan. In 1801 the edition by Nichols was published, and it reap- 
peared in 1804 and in 1808. Hawkesworth and Thomas Sheridan supplied 
biographies which Leslie Stephen characterized by saying that Hawkes- 
worth's gave no new material and that Sheridan's was " pompous and 
dull." (Preface to Leslie Stephen's Life of Swift.) 
5 



66 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

feeling which every student of Scott must have had in regard 
to the large editorial labors that he undertook, in saying, " I 
am delighted and surprised; for how a person of your turn 
could wade through, and so accurately analyze what you have 
done (namely, all the dull things calculated to illustrate your 
author), seems almost impossible, and a prodigy in the history 
of the human mind." The work was first published in 1814. 
Ten years later it was revised and reissued; and Scott's Swift 
has, like his Dryden, been the standard edition of that author 
ever since. 

In each case Scott had to deal with an important and varied 
body of literature in the two fields of poetry and prose, though 
the proportions were different; and in each case he had occa- 
sion for illustrative historical annotations of the kind that he 
wrote with unrivalled facility. He was master of the political 
intrigues of Queen Anne's reign no less completely than of the 
circumstances which gave rise to Absalom and Achitophel, and 
the fact that his notes are less voluminous in the Swift is prob- 
ably to be accounted for by the comparative absence of quaint- 
ness in the literary and social fashions of the eighteenth century. 

The peculiar conditions under which Swift's writings had ap- 
peared, and his remarkable indifference to literary fame, gave 
the editor opportunity to look for material which had not before 
been included in his works. The diligent search of Scott and 
his various correspondents enabled him to add about thirty 
poems, between sixty and seventy letters from Swift, and about 
sixteen other small pieces. The most noteworthy item among 
these additions was the correspondence between Swift and 
Miss Vanhomrigh, of which only a very small part had pre- 
viously been made public.^ 

Scott's notes seem to indicate that most of the necessary 
searching through newspapers and obscure pamphlets for for- 
gotten work of Swift was performed by " obliging correspon- 
dents," and that the editor himself had only to pass judgment 
on what was brought to his attention. This impression may 

^Correspondence of C. K. Sharpe, Vol. II, p. 178. 

^This correspondence consisted of 28 letters from Swift, and 16 from 
" Vanessa." 



SWIFT 67 

arise largely from his cordiality in expressing indebtedness to 
his helpers, but it is certain that his position as a popular poet 
gave Scott the assistance of many people who would not have 
been enlisted in the work by an ordinary editor. But Scott 
had the difficult task of deciding whether the unauthenticated 
pieces were to be assigned to Swift. The bibliography of 
Swift is still so uncertain that it is impossible to say how many 
of the small pamphlets in verse and prose added in this edition 
are really his work.^ Scott had good reason for his additions 
in most cases, though sometimes, as he was aware, the Dean had 
merely revised the work of other people. The editor was occa- 
sionally over-credulous in attributing pieces to Swift, but he was 
perhaps oftener too generous in giving room to things which he 
knew had very little claim to be considered Swift's work. 
When he was in doubt he chose to err on the safe side, accord- 
ing to the principles set forth in the following note on the 
Letter from Dr. Tripe to Nestor Ironside: " The piece contains 
a satirical description of Steele's person, and should the editor 
be mistaken in conjecturing that Swift contributed to compose 
it, may nevertheless, at this distance of time, merit preserva- 
tion as a literary curiosity."^ The ample space afforded by the 

lA comparison of the index with the bibliography in the Dictionary of 
National Biography and with Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole's Notes for a Bibli- 
ography of Swift {Bibliographer, vi : 160-71) shows that Scott was usually 
right in his judgment on the main articles. But since Mr. Lane-Poole 
ends his list thus : " And numerous short poems, trifles, characters and short 
pieces," it is evident that one cannot carry the investigation far without 
undertaking to make a complete bibliography of Swift. Mr. Temple Scott 
says, in the Advertisement of his edition of Swift's Prose Works, begun 
in 1897, that since Sir Walter's edition of 1824 "there has been no serious 
attempt to grapple with the difficulties which then prevented and which 
still beset the attainment of a trustworthy and substantially complete text." 

2 Swift, Vol. IV, p. 280. Two more of Scott's comments may be given, 
further to illustrate his method. " This piece [William Crowe's Address 
to her Majesty, Swift, Vol. XII, p. 265] and those which follow, were first 
extracted by the learned Dr. Barrett, of Trinity College, Dublin, from the 
Lanesborough and other manuscripts. I have retained them from internal 
evidence, as I have discarded some articles upon the same score." " The 
following poems [poems given as " ascribed to Swift," Vol. X, p. 434] are 
extracted from the manuscript of Lord Lanesborough, called the Whimsical 
Medley. They are here inserted in deference to the opinion of a most 
obliging correspondent, who thinks they are juvenile attempts of Swift. I 
own I cannot discover much internal evidence in support of the suppo- 
sition." 



68 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

nineteen volumes of the book gives room to Arbuthnot's His- 
tory of John Bull — because it was " usually published in Swift's 
works," — to the verses addressed to the Dean and those written 
in memory of him, as well as to the prose and verse miscellanies 
of Pope and Swift, and the miscellanies and jeux d'esprit of 
Swift and Sheridan. Swift's correspondence fills the last four 
and a half volumes. 

The biography, which occupies tlie first volume, is admir- 
able in tone, but the facts Scott gives are less to be relied upon 
than the inferences and conclusions he derives from them. He 
corresponded with persons who were in a position to know 
about Swift from his friends and acquaintances, and probably 
he trusted too much to these " original sources." We find, as 
perhaps the most noteworthy instance, that the marriage to 
Stella is stated as an ascertained fact, on authority that is not 
now considered convincing. Later biographers of Swift, — Sir 
Henry Craik, Leslie Stephen, Mr. Churton Collins, — have borne 
witness to the human interest of Scott's biography, and its pre- 
eminence, in spite of inaccuracies, among all the Lives of Swift 
that have been written. But Mr. Churton Collins thinks Scott 
did not present a really clear view of Swift's mysterious char- 
acter, and Craik says he took only the conventional attitude 
towards Swift's politics, misanthropy, and religion. The charge 
indicates Scott's weakness, and perhaps also much of his 
strength, as a biographer and critic, for he had no prejudice 
against the conventional as such, and was never anxious to 
exhibit special " insight " of any kind. Yet I think his por- 
trayal of Swift has seemed to most readers a clear presenta- 
tion of a real and comprehensible character.^ 

^ Colonel Parnell, writing in the English Historical Review on " Dean 
Swift and the Memoirs of Captain Carleton," has spoken of the biography 
as " this most partial, verbose, and inaccurate account of the dean's life 
and writings." He says also that in editing Carleton's Memoirs Scott 
adopted, without investigation and in the face of evidence, Johnson's opin- 
ion that the memoirs were genuine ; that Scott was mistaken about the 
date of the first edition and misquoted the title page ; and that his " glow- 
ing account " of Lord Peterborough, in the introduction, was amplified 
(without acknowledgment) from a panegyric by Dr. Birch in " Houbraken's 
Heads." (English Historical Review, January, 1891 ; vi : 97. For a fur- 
ther reference to the article see below, p. 144.) 



SWIFT 69 

Scott's remark when he undertook the work, that Swift was 
one of his early favorites/ seems surprising when one remem- 
bers how his genial nature recoiled from misanthropy and 
cynicism; but his treatment of the Dean was so sympathetic 
that Jeffrey thought him decidedly too lenient, and was moved 
to express righteous indignation in the pages of the Edinburgh 
Reviezv.^ The rebuke was unnecessary, for Scott did not omit 
to record Swift's failings and to express wholesomely vigorous 
opinions concerning them, though he felt that they ought to be 
looked upon as evidences of disease rather than of guilt. He 
felt also, with perhaps some excess of charity but surely not 
such as could be in the least harmful, that " if the Dean's prin- 
ciples were misanthropical, his practice was benevolent. Few 
have written so much with so little view either to fame or to 
profit, or to aught but benefit to the public."^ Jeffrey's con- 
demnation of Scott's point of view was mingled with just 
praise. He said of the biography : " It is quite fair and mod- 
erate in politics; and perhaps rather too indulgent and tender 
towards individuals of all descriptions, — more full, at least, of 
kindness and veneration for genius and social virtue, than of 
indignation at baseness and profligacy. Altogether it is not 
much like the production of a mere man of letters, or a fastid- 
ious speculator in sentiment and morality ; but exhibits through- 
out, and in a very pleasing form, the good sense and large 
toleration of a man of the world." 

The very practical motives that inspired most of Swift's 
pamphlets would naturally attract Scott. Probably it was the 
remembrance of the Drapier's Letters that suggested to him 
a similar form of protest against proposed changes in the Scot- 
tish currency; certainly the Letters of Malachi Malagrozvther 
had an effect comparable to that of Swift's more consummately 
ingenious appeal. Another quality in Swift's work that would 
naturally arouse Scott's admiration was the remarkable direct- 
ness and lucidity of the style. Scott appreciated the originality 
and force of Swift, even when it was used in the service of 

1 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 20. 

^ September, 181 6. 

^ Swift, Vol. XVII, p. 4, note. 



70 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

satire. Sometimes, he says, "the intensity of his satire gives 
to his poetry a character of emphatic violence which borders 
upon grandeur."^ The editor's discussion of Gulliver's Travels, 
an acute and illuminating little essay, contains one comment 
that gives an amusing revelation of his point of view. He says 
in regard to the fourth part of the story : " It is some consola- 
tion to remark that the fiction on which this libel on human 
nature rests is in every respect gross and improbable, and, far 
from being entitled to the praise due to the management of the 
first two parts, is inferior in plan even to the third."^ This is 
a sound verdict, even if it does contain an extra-literary ele- 
ment. Scott surpassed most of his contemporaries, except the 
younger Romantic writers, in his ability to eliminate irrelevant 
considerations in estimating any literary work; and if occa- 
sionally his strong moral feeling appears in his criticism, it 
serves to remind "us how much less often this happens than a 
knowledge of his temperament would lead us to expect. In 
spite of the qualities in his subject that might naturally bias 
Scott's judgment, his criticism throughout this edition of 
Swift seems on the whole very judicious. It defines the lit- 
erary importance and brings out plainly the power of a man 
whose work presents unusual perplexities to the critic. 

The Somers Tracts 

Character of the collection and of Scott's work on it — Occasional 
carelessness — Purpose of the notes — Scott's attitude towards these 
studies. 

While Scott was working on his Dryden and before he began 
the Swift he undertook to edit the great collection which had 
been published fifty years before as Somers' Tracts. His task 
was to arrange, revise, and annotate pamphlets which repre- 
sented every reign from Elizabeth to George I. He grouped 
them chronologically by reigns, and separated them further 
into sections under the headings, — Ecclesiastical, Historical, 
Civil, Military, Miscellaneous ; he also added eighty-one pam- 
phlets, all written before the time of James II. The largest 

'^ Life of Swift, conclusion. ^ Swift, Vol. XI, p. 12. 



THE SOMERS TRACTS 71 

number of additions in any one section was historical and had 
reference to Strafford. Among the miscellaneous tracts that 
he incorporated were Derrick's Image of Ireland from a copy 
in the Advocates' Library, and Gosson's School of Abuse. 
Scott's statement in the Advertisement as to why he did not 
omit any of the original collection shows his unpedantic atti- 
tude toward the kind of studies which he was encouraging by 
the republication of this series. He says : " When the variety 
of literary pursuits, and the fluctuation of fashionable study 
is considered, it may seem rash to pass a hasty sentence of 
exclusion, even upon the dullest and most despised of the 
essays which this ample collection offers to the public. There 
may be among the learned, even now, individuals to whom the 
rabbinical lore of Hugh Broughton presents more charms than 
the verses of Homer; and a future day may arise when tracts 
on chronology will bear as high a value among antiquaries as 
' Greene's Groats' Worth of Wit,' or ' George Peek's Jests,' 
the present respectable objects of research and reverence." 

In editing this collection Scott made little attempt to decide 
disputed problems of authorship when the explanation did not 
lie upon the surface. Indeed the following note regarding the 
tract called A New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty 
shows that he sometimes neglected very obvious sources of 
information, for the piece is given in one of Defoe's own col- 
lections of his works : " This defence of whiggish loyalty," says 
Scott, " seems to have been written by the celebrated Daniel 
De Foe, a conjecture which is strengthened by the frequent 
reference to his poem of the True-born Englishman."^ He 
was not often so careless, but the rapidity and range of his 
work during these years undoubtedly gave occasion for more 
than one lapse of accuracy, while at the same time it perhaps 
increased the effectiveness of his comment. 

^ Vol. IX, p. 569. The tract had already been correctly assigned. A 
similar note on another tract indicates more careful research on the 
part of the editor. The paper is A Secret History of One Year, which 
had commonly been attributed to Robert Walpole. Scott says : " This 
tract is not to be found in Mr. Coxe's list of Sir Robert Walpole's 
publications, nor in that given by his son, the Earl of Oxford, in the 
Royal and Noble Authors. ... It does not seem at all probable that 
Walpole should at this crisis have thought it proper to advocate these prin- 
ciples." (Vol. XIII, p. 873.) The piece is now attributed to Defoe. 



72 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

His notes and introductions vary in length according to the 
requirements of the case, for he aimed to provide such material 
as would prevent the necessity of reference to other works. 
Matters that were obscure he explained, and he wrote little 
comment on those that were generally understood. When he 
left himself so free a hand he could indulge his personal tastes 
somewhat also, and we are not surprised to find an especial 
abundance of notes on an account of the Gowrie Conspiracy, 
which presented a perplexing problem in Scottish history. 

The connection of Somers^ Tracts with other things that 
Scott did has already been remarked upon.^ That he found 
some sort of stimulation in all his scholarly employments is 
sufficiently evident to anyone who studies his work as a whole, 
and this fact might well serve as a motive for such study. Yet 
it is only fair to remember that Scott was not a novelist during 
these years when he was performing his most laborious edi- 
torial tasks. We are accustomed to think of the brilliant use 
he was afterwards to make of the knowledge he was gaining, 
but the motives which influenced him were those of the man 
whose interest in literature and history makes scholarly work 
seem the most natural way of earning money. " These are 
studies, indeed, proverbially dull," he once wrote, speaking of 
Horace Walpole's antiquarian researches, " but it is only when 
they are pursued by those whose fancies nothing can enliven."^ 

The Lives of the Novelists, and Comments on Other Eighteenth 
Century Writers 

The Novelists' Library — Writers discussed — Value of the Lives — 
General tone of competence in these essays — Scott's catholic taste — 
Points of special interest in the discussion — Relations of the novel and 
the drama — Supernatural machinery in novels — Mistakes in the criti- 
cism of Defoe — Realism — Motive in the novel — Aim of the prefaces 
— Scott's familiarity with eighteenth century literature. 

It has already been said that a large part of Scott's critical 
work concerned itself with the eighteenth century. Of his 
greater editorial labors two may be considered as belonging to 
that period, for Ballantyne's Novelists' Library, though an 

^ See above, p. 4. ^ Horace Walpole, in Lives of the Novelists. 



THE LIVES OF THE NOVELISTS 73 

enterprise which was commercially a failure and which conse- 
quently remained incomplete, may from the point of view of 
Scott's contributions fitly be compared with the Dryden and 
the Swift. Such parts as were published appeared in 1821, 
The bulk of the volumes and the small type in which they were 
printed were considered to be the cause of their failure, and 
it was not until the critical biographies were extracted and pub- 
lished separately, by Galignani the Parisian book-seller, in 1825, 
that they seem to have attracted notice. 

Scott wrote these Lives of the Novelists at a time when his 
hands were full of literary projects, altogether for John Bal- 
lantyne's benefit. The author afterwards spoke of them as 
" rather flimsily written,"^ but we may surmise that to the fact 
that they were not the result of special study is due something 
of their ripeness of reflection and breadth of generalization. 
" They contain a large assemblage of manly and sagacious 
remarks on human life and manners,"^ wrote the Quarterly 
reviewer. 

The writers considered were all British, with the exception 
of LeSage. The choice, or at least the arrangement, seems 
more or less haphazard. Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett 
naturally began the group, and Sterne followed after an inter- 
val. Johnson and Goldsmith were treated briefly, for the 
prefaces were to be proportioned to the amount of work by 
each author included in the text. Horace Walpole, Clara 
Reeve, and Mrs. Radcliffe represented the Gothic romance. 
Charles Johnstone, Robert Bage, and Richard Cumberland 
were among the inferior writers included. Henry Mackenzie, 
who was still living and was a personal friend of Scott, com- 
pletes the list so far as it went before the series was terminated 
by the publisher's death. When Scott's Miscellaneous Prose 
Works were collected he added the lives of Charlotte Smith 
and Defoe, but in each of these cases the biographical portion 
was by another hand, the criticism being his own.^ 

The study of the novel as a genre was naturally undeveloped 
at that time. Dunlop's History of Prose Fiction had appeared 

^ Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 512. ^Quarterly, September, 1826. 

^ See his explanation, in the articles themselves. 



74 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

in 1814, evidently a much more ambitious attempt than Scott's ; 
but Scott could treat the British novelists with comparative 
freedom from the trammels of any established precedent. Of 
course his position as one who had struck out a wonderful new 
path in the writing of novels gave to his reflections on other 
novelists a very special interest. The Lives of the Novelists 
are not to be neglected even now, and this is the more to be 
insisted on because the criticism of novels has been practiced 
with increasing zeal since Scott himself has become a classic, 
and since his successors have made this field of literature more 
varied and popular, if not greater, than the first masters made 
it. A recent writer on eighteenth century literature says : " By 
far the best criticism of the eighteenth century novelists will be 
found in the prefatory notices contributed by Scott to Bal- 
lantyne's Novelists' Library."'^ But the same writer adds : 
" Sir Walter Scott, indeed, considered Fathom superior to 
Jonathan Wild, an opinion which must always remain one of 
the mysteries of criticism."^ 

This comment indicates that there was no lack of assured- 
ness in Scott's treatment, and we do indeed find a very pleasant 
tone of competence which, though liable to error as in the 
exaggerated praise bestowed upon Smollett, gives much of 
their effectiveness to the criticisms. The quality appears else- 
where in Scott's critical work, but it is perhaps especially 
noticeable here. For example, we find this dictum : " There is 
no book in existence, in which so much of the human character, 
under all its various shades and phases, is described in so few 
words, as in the Diable Boiteux."^ The illustration is perhaps 
a trifle extreme, for Scott is not often really dogmatic. From 
this point of view as from others we naturally make the com- 
parison with Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and we find that 
without being so sententious, so admirably compact in style, 
Scott is also not so dictatorial. 

We cannot accuse Scott of liking any one kind of novel to 
the exclusion of others. He ranks Clarissa Harlowe very 

^ The Mid-Eighteenth Century, by J. H. Millar, p. 143, note. 
^ Ibid., p. 159. Scott compares Fielding and Smollett at some length in 
the Life of Smollett. 
^ Life of Le Sage. 



THE LIVES OF THE NOVELISTS 75 

high ;^ he says Tom Jones is " truth and human nature itself ."^ 
The Vicar of Wakefield he calls " one of the most delicious 
morsels of fictitious composition on which the human mind was 
ever employed." " We return to it again and again," he says, 
" and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to 
reconcile us to human nature."^ He praises Tristram Shandy, 
calling Uncle Toby and his faithful Squire, " the most delightful 
characters in the work, or perhaps in any other."* The quiet 
fictions of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, the exciting 
tales of Mrs. Radcliffe, the sentiment of Sterne, even the satires 
of Bage, — all pleased him in one way or another. Scott's 
autobiography contains the following comment on his boyish 
tastes in the matter of novels : " The whole Jemmy and Jenny 
Jessamy tribe I abhorred, and it required the art of Burney, 
or the feeling of Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a domestic 
tale. But all that was adventurous and romantic I devoured 
without much discrimination."^ In later life he learned to 
exercise his judgment in regard to stories of adventure not 
less than those of the " domestic " sort, and perhaps the liking 
for quiet tales grew upon him; at any rate his taste seems 
remarkably catholic. 

The most interesting portions of the Lives of the Novelists 
are those which show us, by the frequent recurrence of the 
same subjects, what parts of the theory of novel-writing had 
particularly engaged Scott's attention. For example we find 
him discussing, most fully in the Life of Fielding, the reasons 
why a successful novelist is likely not to be a successful play- 
wright. The way in which he looks at the matter suggests 
that he was thinking quite as much of the probability of failure 
in his own case should he begin to write plays, as of the sub- 
ject of the memoir; for Fielding wrote his plays before his 
novels, but the argument assumes a man who writes good nov- 
els first and bad plays afterwards. One of his statements 
seems rather curious and hard to explain, — " Though a good 
acting play may be made by selecting a plot and characters 
from a novel, yet scarce any effort of genius could render a 

1 Life of Richardson. ^ Life of Fielding. 

2 Life of Goldsmith. As we might expect, Scott speaks rather too favor- 
ably of Goldsmith's hack work in history and science. 

* Life of Sterne. ^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 35. 



76 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

play into a narrative romance." Perhaps he expected the 
" Terryfied " versions of Guy Mannering and Roh Roy to hold 
the stage longer than fate has permitted them to do. From 
another point of view also he was interested in the connection 
of the novel and the drama. He felt that the direction of the 
drama in the modern period had been largely determined by 
the influence of successful novels ; and he probably overesti- 
mated the effect of the " romances of Calprenede and Scuderi " 
on heroic tragedy.^ 

A subject which recurs even oftener than that of the dis- 
tinction between drama and novel is the question of supernat- 
ural machinery in novels. Horace Walpole is commended for 
giving us ghosts without furnishing explanations. Indeed the 
Castle of Otranto is highly praised ;^ but so also is Mrs. Rad- 
clifife's work, except on the one point of the attempt to- rationalize 
mysteries. The kind of romance which she " introduced "^ is 
compared with the melodrama, and its particular mode of ap- 
peal is analyzed in very interesting fashion. In the Life of 
Clara Reeve the proper treatment of ghosts is discussed at 
length, for that author had contended that ghosts should be 
very mild and of " sober demeanour." Scott justifies her prac- 
tice, but not her theory, on the following grounds : " What are 
the limits to be placed to the reader's credulity, when those of 
common-sense and ordinary nature are at once exceeded ? The 
question admits only one answer, namely, that the author him- 
self, being in fact the magician, shall evoke no spirits whom he 
is not capable of endowing with manners and language cor- 
responding to their supernatural character." 

Scott writes with much enthusiasm about Defoe's famous 
little ghost-story, The Apparition of Mrs. Veal, praising De- 
foe's wonderful skill in making the unreal seem credible. In 
connection with this tale Scott developed a very interesting 
anecdote to explain the fact that Drelincourt's Defence against 
the Fear of Death is recommended by the apparition. " Dre- 

^ See above, p. 53, note. 

^ See also the Introductory epistle to Ivanhoe ; and the Review of Wal- 
pole's Letters. " In attaining his contemporary triumph," says Mr. Brander 
Matthews, " Scott owed more to Horace Walpole than to Maria Edge- 
worth." The Historical Novel, p. 10. 

^ Scott uses the word. 



THE LIVES OF THE NOVELISTS 77 

lincourt's book," he says, " being neglected, lay a dead stock 
on the hands of the publisher. In this emergency he applied 
to De Foe to assist him (by dint of such means as were then, 
as well as now, pretty well understood in the literary world) 
in rescuing the unfortunate book from the literary death to 
which general neglect seemed about to consign it." Scott 
goes on to assert that the story was simply a consummately 
clever advertising device. He may have found the germ of 
his hypothesis in a book-seller's tradition, but he states it as 
an assured fact, and doubtless believed it firmly because it 
seemed so beautifully reasonable. His explanation became the 
basis of later statements on the subject, and now obliges every- 
one who discusses Defoe to supply a contradiction; for the 
truth is that Drelincourt's book was so highly popular as to 
have gone through several editions before the ghost of Mrs. 
Veal mentioned it. Moreover, if Scott's little tale was ficti- 
tious, Defoe's, on the other hand, was really a reporter's ver- 
sion of an experience actually related by the person to whom 
he assigns it, and his skill in achieving verisimilitude was per- 
haps in this case less wonderful than his critics have generally 
supposed.^ 

On the subject of realism, Scott was not in general very 
rigid. In his Life of Richardson he says : " It is unfair to tax 
an author too severely upon improbabilities, without conceding 
which his story could have no existence ; and we have the less 
title to do so, because, in the history of real life, that which is 
actually true bears often very little resemblance to that which 
is probable. "2 But this is perhaps only a plea for one kind 

^ Mr. G. A. Aitken has given convincing evidence that the story was not 
invented by Defoe. Mr. Aitken also shows the falsity of Scott's statement 
that Drelincourt's book was in need of advertising, as William Lee, in his 
Life of Defoe, had previously done. (See The Nineteenth Century, xxxvii : 
95, January, 1895 ; and also Aitken's edition of Defoe's Romances and 
Narratives, Vol. XV, Introduction.) A passage from Defoe's History of 
the Church of Scotland is quoted in the review of Tales of My Landlord, 
by Scott, who says that it probably suggested one of the scenes in Old 
Mortality. Scott there speaks of Defoe's " liveliness of imagination," and 
says he " excelled all others in dramatizing a story, and presenting it as 
if in actual speech and action before the reader." {Quarterly Review, 
January, 181 7.) 

^ See also The Fortunes of Nigel, Vol. II, pp. 88-9. 



78 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

of realism. He also refers to the question of historical " keep- 
ing," and concludes that it is possible to have so much accuracy 
that the public will refuse to be interested, as Lear would 
hardly be popular on the stage if the hero were represented in 
the bearskin and paint which a Briton of his time doubtless 
wore.^ 

The motive of the novel is a subject which naturally engages 
the attention of the novelist-critic. Romantic fiction, he thinks, 
may have sufficient justification if it acts as an opiate for tired 
spirits, A significant antithesis between his point of view in 
this matter and the more common attitude taken by critics in 
his time is illustrated by two reviews of Mrs. Shelley's Frank- 
enstein, to which we may refer, though the book was later than 
those included in the Novelists' Library. Scott wrote in Black- 
wood's: " We , . . congratulate our readers upon a novel 
which excites new reflections and untried sources of emo- 
tion."^ The Quarterly reviewer took the opposite and more 
conservative attitude and expressed himself thus : " Our taste 
and our judgment alike revolt at this kind of writing, and the 
greater the ability with which it may be executed the worse it 
is — it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners, or morality; 
it cannot mend, and will not even amuse its readers, unless 
their taste has been deplorably vitiated — it fatigues the feel- 
ings without interesting the understanding; it gratuitously 
harasses the heart, and wantonly adds to the store, already 
too great, of painful sensations."^ In general Scott minimizes 
the effect of any moral that may be expressed in the novel, but 
occasionally he seems inconsistent, when he is talking of senti- 
ments that are peculiarly distasteful to him.* But his thesis 
is that " the direct and obvious moral to be deduced from a 
fictitious narrative is of much less consequence to the public 
than the mode in which the story is treated in the course of 
its details,"^ In the Life of Fielding he says of novels: " The 
best which can be hoped is that they may sometimes instruct 

'^ Life of Clara Reeve. ^Blackwood, March, 1818. 

^ Quarterly, May, 1818. 

* See a reference to Voltaire and other French authors ; Napoleon, Vol. 
I, ch. 2. 

* Life of Richardson. 



THE LIVES OF THE NOVELISTS 79 

the youthful mind by real pictures of life, and sometimes 
awaken their better feelings and sympathies by strains of 
generous sentiment, and tales of fictitious woe. Beyond this 
point they are a mere elegance, a luxury contrived for the 
amusement of polished life." 

He conceived that his prefaces might be useful to warn read- 
ers against any ill effects that might otherwise result from the 
reading of the accompanying texts ; and our comments on the 
Lives of the Novelists may fitly close with a quotation which 
shows the writer's attitude toward the novels and his own 
criticisms upon them. The passage is taken from the Life of 
Bage. " We did not think it proper to reject the works of so 
eminent an author from this collection, merely on account of 
speculative errors.' We have done our best to place a mark 
on these ; and as we are far from being of opinion that the 
youngest and most thoughtless derive their serious opinions 
from productions of this nature, we leave them for our read- 
er's amusement, trusting that he will remember that a good 
jest is no argument; that the novelist, like the master of a 
puppet-show, has his drama under his absolute authority, and 
shapes the events to favour his own opinions ; and that whether 
the Devil flies away with Punch, or Punch strangles the Devil, 
forms no real argument as to the comparative power of either 
one or other, but only indicates the special pleasure of the 
master of the motion." 

Scott was deeply in sympathy with the literature of the cen- 
tury within which he was born. To the evidence of his Swift 
and of the Lives of the Novelists it may be added that he con- 
templated making a complete edition of Pope, and that he pro- 
fessed to like London and The Vanity of Human Wishes the 
best of all poems. James Ballantyne said, rather ambiguously, 
" I think I never saw his countenance more indicative of high 

1 We gather from Scott's article that he considered the following to be 
the chief " speculative errors " of Bage : he was an infidel ; he misrepre- 
sented different classes of society, thinking the high tyrannical and the low 
virtuous and generous ; his system of ethics was founded on philosophy 
instead of religion ; he was inclined to minimize the importance of purity 
in women ; he considered tax-gatherers extortioners, and soldiers, licensed 
murderers. 



80 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

admiration than while reciting aloud from those productions."^ 
In one of his letters Scott spoke of the " beautiful and feeling 
verses by Dr. Johnson to the memory of his humble friend 
Levett, . . . which with me, though a tolerably ardent Scotch- 
man, atone for a thousand of his prejudices."^ Not only did 
he admire the great biography, but he called Boswell " such a 
biographer as no man but [Johnson] ever had, or ever deserved 
to have."^ But he once said that many of the Ramblers were 
" little better than a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious 
maxims are made to swagger in lofty and mystic language, 
and get some credit only because they are not understood."* 

Among other eighteenth century writers, Addison is distin- 
guished by high praise in a few casual references,^ but Scott 
once admitted that he did not like Addison so much as he felt 
to be proper.^ A collection of Prior's poems Scott calls " an 
English classic of the first order."^ He speaks of Parnell as 
" an admirable man and elegant poet,"* and mentions " the 
ponderous, persevering, and laborious dullness of Sir Richard 
Blackmore."^ But these observations are of little importance 
except as they indicate that Scott had read the authors of the 
eighteenth century and acquiesced in the conventional judg- 
ments upon them. It is seldom in his brief and casual com- 
ments that Scott is particularly interesting as a critic, except 
when he is speaking of living writers, for he lacked the gift 
of conciseness. When he has a large canvas he is at his best, 
and this he has in the principal works described in this chap- 
ter: — The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, the Works of 
Dryden, the Works of Swift, and the Lives of the Novelists. 

^Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 132. 

^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 192. In his George the Third, Thackeray 
said : " Do you remember the verses — the sacred verses — which Johnson 
wrote on the death of his humble friend Levett?" (Biographical edition 
of Thackeray, Vol. VII, p. 671.) 

^ Life of Johnson. 

* Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate. 

^Dryden, Vol. XI, p. 81, note; Review of the Life and Works of John 
Home, Quarterly, June, 1827. 

^ Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 44. 

' Swift, Vol. XVI, p. 27s, note. On one of the last sad days before Sir 
Walter left Scotland for his Italian journey he quoted in full Prior's poem 
on Mezeray's History of France. (Lockhart, Vol. V, pp. 339-40.) 

^Sivift, Vol. Ill, p. 36. ^Ibid., Vol. XIII, p. 24. 



CHAPTER IV 
Scott's Criticism of his Contemporaries 

Scott's freedom from literary jealousy — His disapproval of the typi- 
cal reviewer's attitude — Jeffrey, Gifford, and Lockhart— His own prac- 
tice in regard to reviewing— His informal critical remarks— Oppor- 
tunity for favorable judgments afforded by the number of important 
writers in his period. 

Poets — Bums — Coleridge — Relation of Christabel to Scott's work 

— Scott's dislike for extreme Romanticism — Wordsworth — Southey 

— Scott's review of Kehama — Byron — Scott's opinion of Byron's 
character — Campbell — Moore — Allan Cunningham — Hogg — Crabbe 

— Joanna Baillie — Matthew Lewis — Scott's judgment on his early 
taste for poetry — Absence of comment on the work of Lamb, Landor, 
Hunt, Hazlitt, and DeQuincey. 

Novelists— Jane Austen— Maria Edgeworth— Cooper— Personal re- 
lations between Scott and Cooper — Scott's verdict on Americans in 
general — Washington Irving — Goethe — Fouque — Scott's interest in men 
of action. 

To study Scott's relations with contemporary writers is a 
very pleasant task because nothing- shows better the greatness 
of his heart. His admirable freedoin from literary jealousy 
was an innate virtue which he deliberately increased by culti- 
vation, taking care, also, never to subject himself to the condi- 
tions which he thought accounted for the faults of Pope, who 
had " neither the business nor the idleness of life to divide his 
mind from his Parnassian pursuits."^ " Those who have not 
his genius may be so far compensated by avoiding his foibles," 
Scott said ; and some years later he wrote, — " When I first 
saw that a literary profession was to be my fate, I endeavoured 
by all efforts of stoicism to divest myself of that irritable degree 
of sensibility — or, to speak plainly, of vanity — which makes 
the poetical race miserable and ridiculous."" The record of 
his life clearly shows that his kindness towards other men of 
letters was not limited to words. One who received his good 
offices has written, — " The sternest words I ever heard him 

1 Correspondence of C. K. Sharpe, Vol. II, p. 194. 
^Journal, Vol. I, p. 6y ; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 401. 

6 81 



82 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

Utter were concerning a certain poet : ' That man,' he said, * has 
had much in his power, but he never befriended rising genius 
yet.' "^ We may safely say that Scott enjoyed Hking the work 
of other men. " I am most deHghted with praise from those 
who convince me of their good taste by admiring the genius 
of my contemporaries,"^ he once wrote to Southey. 

It is commonly supposed that Scott's amiability led him into 
absurd excesses of praise for the works of his fellow-craftsmen, 
and indeed he did say some very surprising things. But when 
all his references to any one man are brought together, they 
will be found, with a few exceptions, pretty fairly to charac- 
terize the writer. His obiter dicta must be read in the light 
of one another, and in the light, also, of his known principles. 
Temperamentally modest about his own work, he was also 
habitually optimistic, and the combination gave him an utterly 
different quality from that of the typical Edinburgh or Quar- 
terly critics. 

His disapproval of their point of view he expressed more 
than once.^ It seemed to him futile and ungentlemanly for 
the anonymous reviewer to seek primarily for faults, or " to 
wound any person's feelings . . . unless where conceit or false 
doctrine strongly calls for reprobation."^ " Where praise can 
be conscientiously mingled in a larger proportion than blame," 
he said, " there is always some amusement in throwing to- 
gether our ideas upon the works of our fellow-labourers." 
He thought, indeed, that vituperative and satiric criticism was 
defeating its own end, in the case of the Edinburgh Review, 
since it was overworked to the point of monotony. Such 
criticism he considered futile as well on this account as because 

1 Allan Cunningham's Life of Scott, p. 96. 

^Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 483. 

3 See the satirical paragraph in his review of Gertrude of Wyoming, on 
the habits of reviewers in general. " We are perfectly aware," he says, 
" that, according to the modern canons of criticism, the Reviewer is ex- 
pected to show his immense superiority to the author reviewed, and at the 
same time to relieve the tediousness of narration, by turning the epic, 
dramatic, moral story before him into quaint and lively burlesque." {Quar- 
terly, May, 1809.) In his review of the Life and Works of John Home 
he speaks of " the hackneyed rules of criticism, which, having crushed a 
hundred poets, will never, it may be prophesied, create, or assist in creat- 
ing, a single one." (^Quarterly, June, 1827.) 

^Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 363. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 83 

he thought it hkely to have an injurious effect on the work of 
really gifted writers. 

An admirer of both Jeffrey and Scott, who once heard a 
conversation between the two men, has recorded a distinction 
which is exactly what we should expect.^ He says : " Jeffrey, 
for the most part, entertained us, when books were under dis- 
cussion, with the detection of faults, blunders, absurdities, or 
plagiarisms : Scott took up the matter where he left it, recalled 
some compensating beauty or excellence for which no credit 
had been allowed, and by the recitation, perhaps, of one fine 
stanza, set the poor victim on his legs again." 

On Jeffrey Scott's verdict was, " There is something in his 
mode of reasoning that leads me greatly to doubt whether, not- 
withstanding the vivacity of his imagination, he really has any 
feeling of poetical genius, or whether he has worn it all off by 
perpetually sharpening his wit on the grindstone of criticism." ^ 
His comment on Gifford's reviews was to the effect that people 
were more moved to dislike the critic for his savagery than the 
guilty victim whom he flagellated.^ In the early days of Black- 
wood's Magazine Scott often tried to repress Lockhart's 
" wicked wit,"* and when Lockhart became editor of the 
Quarterly his father-in-law did not always approve of his 
work. " Don't like his article on Sheridan's life,"^ says the 
Journal. " There is no breadth in it, no general views, the 
whole flung away in smart but party criticism. Now, no man 
can take more general and liberal views of literature than 
J. G. L."« 

''■Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 501. For a further comparison of Scott and 
Jeffrey as critics see below, pp. 134-5. 

^Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 204. * Journal, Vol. II, p. 262. 

^Ibid., Vol. V, p. 97. ^Ibid., Vol. I, p. 173. 

^ In general Scott admired Lockhart. " I have known the most able men 
of my time," he once wrote, " and I never met any one who had such 
ready command of his own mind, and possessed in a greater degree the 
power of making his talents available upon the shortest notice, and upon 
any subject." {Life of Murray, Vol. II, p. 222.) But in Lockhart's earlier 
days Scott said, " I am sometimes angry with him for an exuberant love 
of fun in his light writings, which he has caught, I think, from Wilson, 
a man of greater genius than himself perhaps, but who disputes with low 
adversaries, which I think a terrible error, and indulges in a sort of humour 
which exceeds the bounds of playing at ladies and gentlemen, a game to 
which I have been partial all my life." (Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, 
p. 225.) 



84 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

With these opinions, Scott was not likely often to undertake 
the reviewing of books that did not, in one way or another, 
interest him or move his admiration ; and he would lay as much 
stress as possible on their good points. Gifford told him that 
" fun and feeling " were his forte.^ In his early days he was 
probably somewhat influenced by Jeffrey's method, and his 
articles on Todd's Spenser and Godwin's Life of Chaucer indi- 
cate that he could occasionally adopt something of the tone of 
the Edinburgh Review. Years afterwards he refused to write 
an article that Lockhart wanted for the Quarterly, saying, " I 
cannot write anything about the author unless I know it can 
hurt no one alive " ;- but for the first volume of the Quarterly 
he reviewed Sir John Carr's Caledonian Sketches in a way that 
Sharon Turner seriously objected to, because it made Sir John 
seem ridiculous.^ Some of Scott's critics would perhaps apply 
one of the strictures to himself : " Although Sir John quotes 
Horace, he has yet to learn that a wise man should not admire 
too easily; for he frequently falls into a state of wonderment 
at what appears to us neither very new nor very extraordi- 
nary."* But if admiration seems to characterize too great a 
proportion of Scott's critical work, it is because he usually 
preferred to ignore such books as demanded the sarcastic treat- 
ment which he reprehended, but which he felt perfectly capable 
of applying when he wished. Speaking of a fulsome biogra- 
phy he once said, " I can no more sympathize with a mere 
eulogist than I can with a ranting hero upon the stage; and 
it unfortunately happens that some of our disrespect is apt, 
rather unjustly, to be transferred to the subject of the pane- 
gyric in the one case, and to poor Cato in the other."^ 

Besides Scott's formal reviews, we find cited as evidence of 
his extreme amiability his letters, his journal, and the remarks 
he made to friends in moments of enthusiasm. These do in- 
deed contain some sweeping statements, but in almost every 
case one can see some reason, other than the desire to be oblig- 
ing, why he made them. He was not double-faced. One of 
the nearest approaches to it seems to have been in the case of 

^Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 400. 

^Lang's Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 406. 

^Life of Murray, Vol. I, pp. 146-7. 

* Quarterly, February, 1809. ^Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 327- 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 86 

Miss Seward's poetry, for which he wrote such an introduction 
as hardly prepares the reader for the remark he made to Miss 
BailHe, that most of it was " absolutely execrable." His com- 
ment in the edition of the poems — the publication of which 
Miss Seward really forced upon him as a dying request — is 
sedulously kind, and in Waverley he quotes from her a couple 
of lines which he calls " beautiful." But the essay is most 
carefully guarded, and throughout it the editor implies that the 
woman was more admirable than the poetry. Personally, in- 
deed, he seems to have liked and admired her.^ 

The catalogue of Scott's contemporaries is so full of impor- 
tant names that his genius for the enjoyment of other men's 
work had a wide opportunity to display itself without becom- 
ing absurd. An argument early used to prove that Scott was 
the author of Waverley was the frequency of quotation in the 
novels from all living poets except Scott himself, and he felt 
constrained to throw in a reference or two to his own poetry 
in order to weaken the force of the evidence. ^ The reader is 
irresistibly reminded of the following description, given by 
Lockhart in a letter to his wife, of a morning walk taken by 
Wordsworth and Scott in company : " The Unknown was con- 
tinually quoting Wordsworth's Poetry and Wordsworth ditto, 
but the great Laker never uttered one syllable by which it 
might have been intimated to a stranger that your Papa had 
ever written a line either of verse or prose since he was born."* 

^ Scott wrote a poetical epitaph for the burial place of Miss Seward and 
her father. See Edinburgh Annual Register, Vol. II, pt. 2. In the intro- 
duction to The Tapestried Chamber, Scott said, " It was told to me many 
years ago by the late Miss Anna Seward, who, among other accomplish- 
ments that rendered her an amusing inmate in a country house, had that 
of recounting narratives of this sort with very considerable effect ; much 
greater, indeed, than anyone would be apt to guess from the style of her 
written performances." It must be remembered that Miss Seward was 
one of the first persons of any literary note, outside of Edinburgh, to show 
an interest in Scott's work, and he committed himself to admiration of her 
poetry when he was still in a rather uncritical stage. In regard to his 
later feeling about her see Recollections, by R. P. Gillies, Fraser's, xiii : 
692, January, 1836. 

^J. L. Adolphus, in an interesting passage in his Letters to Heber on 
the Authorship of Waverley, noted many of the references to contemporary 
poets. See pp. 53-4. See also Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age, art. Sir Walter 
Scott. 

^Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 341. See also a similar anecdote in For- 
ster's Life of Landor, Vol. II, p. 244. 



86 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

Scott's opinions in regard to his fellow craftsmen may best 
be given largely in his own words — words which cannot fail 
to be interesting, however little evidence they show of any 
attempt to make them quotable. 

In considering Scott's estimation of his contemporaries it is 
chronologically proper to mention Burns first. As a boy of 
fifteen Scott met Burns, an event which filled him with the 
suitable amount of awe. He was most favorably impressed 
with the poet's appearance and with everything in his manner. 
The boy thought, however, that " Burns' acquaintance with 
English poetry was rather limited, and also, that having twenty 
times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Ferguson, he talked 
of them with too much humility as his models."^ Scott's 
admiration of Bums was always expressed in the highest and, 
if one may say so, the most affectionate terms. He refused to 
let himself be named " in the same day " with Burns.^ " Long 
life to thy fame and peace to thy soul, Rob Burns ! " he ex- 
claimed, in his Journal; " when I want to express a sentiment 
which I feel strongly, I find the phrase in Shakespeare — or 
thee."^ On another day he compared Burns with Shakspere 
as excelling all other poets in " the power of exciting the most 
varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions."* 
Again, " The Jolly Beggars, for humorous description and nice 
discrimination of character, is inferior to no poem of the same 
length in the whole range of English poetry."^ Scott wished 
that Burns might have carried out his plan of dramatic com- 
position, and regretted, from that point of view, the excessive 
labor at songs which in the nature of things could not all be 
masterpieces.^ 

Of writers who were more precisely contemporaries of Scott, 
the Lake Poets and Byron are the most important. The prece- 
dence ought to be given to Coleridge because of the suggestion 
Scott caught from a chance recitation of Christabel for the 

^Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 1 16-17. ^Ibid., Vol. II, p. 132. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 321. 

* Review of Cromek's Reliques of Burns, Quarterly, February, 1809. 

^Ibid. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 87 

meter he made so popular in the Lay} Fragments from 
Christabel are quoted or alluded to so often in the novels- and 
throughout Scott's work that we should conclude it had made 
a greater impression upon him than any other single poem 
written in his own time, if Lockhart had not spoken of Words- 
worth's sonnet on Neidpath Castle as one which Scott was 
perhaps fondest of quoting.^ Christabel is not the only one 
of Coleridge's poems which Scott used for allusion or refer- 
ence, but it was the favorite. " He is naturally a grand poet," 
Scott once wrote to a friend. " His verses on Love, I think, 
are among the most beautiful in the English language. Let 
me know if you have seen them, as I have a copy of them as 
they stood in their original form, which was afterwards altered 
for the worse."* The Ancient Mariner also made a decided 
impression on him, if we judge from the fact that he quoted 

^ Crabbe Robinson, in his diary (quoted by Knight in his edition of 
Wordsworth, Vol. X, p. 189), says that Coleridge and his friends " con- 
sider Scott as having stolen the verse " of Christabel. On this point see 
also a letter by Coleridge, given in Meteyard's Group of Englishmen, pp. 
327-8. In 1807 Coleridge wrote to Southey : "I did not over-hugely 
admire the ' Lay of the Last Minstrel,' but saw no likeness whatever to 
the ' Christabel,' much less any improper resemblance." (Letters of Cole- 
ridge, ed. by E. H. Coleridge, Vol. H, p. 523.) Yet Mr. Lang seems to 
think that in this matter Scott " showed something of the deficient sense 
of ineum and tiiuni which marked his freebooting ancestors." {Sir Walter 
Scott, p. 36.) Apparently Scott never dreamed that the matter could be 
looked at in this way. In Lockhart's Scott (Vol. II, pp. 77-8) we find 
described an occasion on which the two men once met in London, when 
they were asked, with other poets who were present, to recite from their 
unpublished writings. Coleridge complied with the request, but Scott said 
he had nothing of his own and would repeat some stanzas he had seen 
in a newspaper. The poem was criticised adversely in spite of Scott's 
protests, till Coleridge lost patience and exclaimed, " Let Mr. Scott alone ; 
I wrote the poem." Coleridge's lines : 

" The Knight's bones are dust 
And his good sword rust, 
His soul is with the saints, I trust," 
are probably much better known as they appear in Ivanhoe, incorrectly 
quoted, than in their proper form. Scott also added a note on Coleridge 
in this connection. {Ivanhoe, Chapter VIII.) 

^But apparently not in any earlier than The Black Dwarf, which was 
written in 1816, the year in which the poem was published. It was about 
1803 that Scott heard Christabel recited. See Familiar Letters, Vol. II, 
p. 221. 

^Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 356. ^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 315. 



88 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

from it several times.^ Scott evidently felt that Coleridge was 
a most tantalizing poet, and once intimated that future genera- 
tions would in regard to him feel something like Milton's desire 
" to call up him who left half told the story of Cambuscan 
bold."^ " No man has all the resources of poetry in such 
profusion, but he cannot manage them so as to bring out any- 
thing of his own on a large scale at all worthy of his genius. 
. . . His fancy and diction would have long ago placed him 
above all his contemporaries, had they been under the direction 
of a sound judgment and a steady will."^ Such, in effect, was 
the opinion that Scott always expressed concerning Coleridge, 
and it is practically that of posterity. In The Monastery Cole- 
ridge is called " the most imaginative of our modem bards." 
In another connection, after speaking of the " exquisite powers 
of poetry he has suffered to remain uncultivated," Scott adds, 
" Let us be thankful for what we have received, however. 
The unfashioned ore, drawn from so rich a mine, is worth all 
to which art can add its highest decorations, when drawn from 
less abundant sources."* These remarks are worth quoting, 
not only because of their wisdom, but also because Scott had 
small personal acquaintance with Coleridge and was rather 
repelled than attracted by what he knew of the character of 
the author of Christabel. His praises cannot in this case be 
called the tribute of friendship, and his own remarkable power 
of self-control might have made him a stern judge of Cole- 
ridge's shortcomings. 

One of his most interesting comments on Coleridge is 
contained in a discussion of Byron's Darkness, a poem which 
to his mind recalled "the wild, unbridled, and fiery imagina- 
tion of Coleridge. "° Darkness is characterized as a mass of 
images and ideas, unarranged, and the critic goes on to warn 
the author against indulging in this sort of poetry. He says : 
"The feeling of reverence which we entertain for that which 

^ See Letters to Heber, p. 293; On Imitations of the Ancient Ballad; 
Lockhart, Vol. Ill, pp. 56 and 264 ; Quentin Durward, Vol. II, p. 394. 

2 Note in The Abbot. ^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 223. 

*Note in St. Ronan's Well. See also the comment on Wallenstein in 
Paul's Letters, Letter XV. 

5 Review of Childe Harold, Canto III, Quarterly, October, 1816. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 89 

is difficult of comprehension, gives way to weariness whenever 
we begin to suspect that it cannot be distinctly comprehended 
by anyone. . . . The strength of poetical conception and beauty 
of diction bestowed upon such prolusions [sic], is as much 
thrown away as the colors of a painter, could he take a cloud 
of mist or a wreath of smoke for his canvas." It is disap- 
pointing that we have no comment from Scott upon Shelley's 
poetry, but we can imagine what is would have been.^ Scott's 
position as the great popularizer of the Romantic movement 
in poetry makes particularly interesting his very evident though 
not often expressed repugnance to the more extreme develop- 
ment of that movement, 

Wordsworth's peculiar theory of poetry seemed to Scott 
superfluous and unnecessary, though he was never, so far as 
we can judge, especially irritated by it.^ Of Wordsworth and 
Southey he wrote to Miss Seward : " Were it not for the unfor- 
tunate idea of forming a new school of poetry, these men are 
calculated to give it a new impulse ; but I think they sometimes 
lose their energy in trying to find not a better but a different 
path from what has been travelled by their predecessors."^ 
Scott paid tribute in the introduction to The Antiquary to as 
much of Wordsworth's poetical creed as he could acquiesce in 
when he said, "The lower orders are less restrained by the 
habit of suppressing their feelings, and ... I agree with my 
friend Wordsworth that they seldom fail to express them in 
the strongest and most powerful language." In a letter to 
Southey Scott calls Wordsworth " a great master of the pas- 

^In 1818 Scott wrote a review of Frankenstein in which it appears that 
he thought Shelley was the author. Shelley had sent the book with a note 
in which he said that it was the work of a friend and he had merely seen 
it through the press ; and Scott took this for the conventional evasion so 
often resorted to by authors. (See Mr. Lang's note in his Introduction to 
the Waverley Novels, p. Ixxxvi.) Scott praises the substance and style of 
the book, and advises the author to cultivate his poetical powers, in words 
which make it evident that he did not know Shelley as a poet, though 
Alastor had appeared in 1816. Scott also praises Frankenstein in his article 
on Hoffmann. In reading Scott's novels I have noted two reminiscences 
of the line, " One word is too often profaned." They are to be found in 
Old Mortality, Vol. II, p. 93, and in Redgaimtlet, Vol. I, p. 224. 

^Journal, Vol. II, p. 179. ^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 40. 



90 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

sions,"^ and in his Journal he said : His imagination " is natur- 
ally exquisite, and highly cultivated by constant exercise."- 
At another time he compared Wordsworth and Southey as 
scholars and commented on the " freshness, vivacity, and 
spring" of Wordsworth's mind.^ 

The personal relations between Scott and Wordsworth were, 
as Wordsworth's tribute in Yarrow Revisited would indicate, 
those of affectionate intimacy. And if Scott took exception 
to Wordsworth's choice of subjects and manner, Wordsworth 
used the same freedom in disagreeing with Scott's poetical 
ideals. " Thank you," he wrote in 1808, " for Marmion, which 
I have read with lively pleasure. I think your end has been 
attained. That it is not in every respect the end which I should 
wish you to purpose to yourself, you will be well aware, from 
what you know of my notions of composition, both as to matter 
and manner."* When, in 1821, Chantrey was about to exhibit 
together his busts of the two poets, Scott wrote : " I am happy 
my effigy is to go with that of Wordsworth, for (differing 
from him in very many points of taste) I do not know a man 
more to be venerated for uprightness of heart and loftiness of 
genius. Why he will sometimes choose to crawl upon all 
fours, when God has given him so noble a countenance to lift 
to heaven, I am as little able to account for as for his quar- 
relling (as you tell me) with the wrinkles which time and 
meditation have stamped his brow withal."^ 

These remarks upon Wordsworth and Coleridge touch merely 
the fringe of the subject, and indeed we do not find that Scott 
exercised any such sublimated ingenuity in appreciating these 
men as has often been considered essential. We can see that 
he admired certain parts of their work intensely, but we look 
in vain for any real analysis of their quality. But as he never 
had occasion to write essays upon their poetry, it is perhaps 
hardly fair to expect anything more than the general remarks 

^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 97. ^Journal, Vol. I, p. 333. 

^Ibid., Vol. II, p. 190. 

*I quote from the letter as given in Knight's Wordsworth, Vol. X. p. 
105. Prof. Knight says that Lockhart quotes the letter less exactly. 
{Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 489.) 

^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 428. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 91 

that we actually do find, and as far as they go they are 
satisfactory. 

Like most of his distinguished contemporaries, Scott held 
the work of Southey in surprisingly high estimation.^ Southey, 
more than anyone else except Wordsworth, and more than 
Wordsworth in some ways, was the " real poet " of the period, 
devoting his whole heart to literature and his whole time to 
literary pursuits. Scott commented on the fact, saying, 
" Southey's ideas are all poetical," and, " In this respect, as 
well as in many others, he is a most striking and interesting 
character."^ Nevertheless Scott found it easy to criticise 
Southey's poems adversely, as we may see from his correspon- 
dence. Writing to Miss Seward he pointed out flaws in the 
story and the characterization of Madoc,^ yet after repeated 
readings he saw enough to convince him that Madoc would in 
the future " assume his real place at the feet of Milton."* 
Thalaba was one of the poems he liked to have read aloud on 
Sunday evenings.^ A review of The Curse of Kehama, in 
which he seemed to express the opinion that this surpassed the 
poet's previous work, illustrates his professed creed as to criti- 
cism. He wrote to Ellis concerning his article : " What I could 
I did, which was to throw as much weight as possible upon 
the beautiful passages, of which there are many, and to slur 
over the absurdities, of which there are not a few. . . . This 
said Kehama affords cruel openings for the quizzers, and I 
suppose will get it roundly in the Edinburgh Review. I could 

^ Even Byron admired Southey. He once wrote, " His prose is perfect. 
Of his poetry there are various opinions : there is, perhaps, too much of it 
for the present generation ; posterity will probably select. He has passages 
equal to anything." (Byron's Letters and Journals, ed. Prothero, Vol. II, 
p. 331.) Shelley also had a high opinion of Southey's work. (Dowden's 
Life of Shelley, Vol. I, p. 158, and pp. 471-2.) Landor liked Madoc and 
Thalaba so much that, when he found Southey hesitating to write more 
poems of a similar kind because they did not pay, he offered to bear the 
expense of the publication. Southey refused the assistance, but was stimu- 
lated by the kindness and considered Landor's encouragement responsible 
for his later work in poetry. (Forster's Life of Landor, Vol. I, pp. 209- 
214.) 

^Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 307. ^Ibid., Vol. I, p. 415. 

*Ibid., Vol. I, p. 477 ; see also Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809, part 
2, p. 588. 

^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 197. 



92 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

have made a very different hand of it, indeed, had the order 
of the day been pour dechirer."'^ If Scott had to make an« 
effort in writing the review, he made it with abundant energy. 
Some absurdities are indeed mentioned, but various particular 
passages are characterized in the most enthusiastic way, with 
such phrases as '' horribly sublime," " impressive and affecting," 
" reminds us of the Satan of Milton, yet stands the compari- 
son," " all the gloomy power of Dante." It may be noted that 
Scott used Milton's name rather freely in comparisons, and 
that for Dante his admiration was altogether unimpassioned,^ 
but the review, after all, is on the whole very laudatory.^ In 
it Scott awards to Southey the palm for a surpassing share of 
imagination, which he elsewhere gave to Coleridge. Possibly 
Scott was the less inclined to be severe over the absurdities of 
Kehama because Southey agreed with his own theory as to 
the evil of fastidious corrections.* At any rate he seems to 
have been quite sincere in saying to Southey, in connection 
with the poet-laureateship which, according to Scott's sugges- 
tion, was offered to him in 1813, "I am not such an ass as 
not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have 
had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my 
favour."^ 

Much as Scott admired Southey, Wordsworth, and Cole- 
ridge, he considered Byron the great poetical genius of the 

^Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 127. 

^In his youth Scott read Dante with other Italian authors, but he did 
not become well acquainted with him, and later even expressed dislike for 
his work. (See Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 408.) In 1825 he wrote to W. S. 
Rose, " I will subscribe for Dante with all pleasure, on condition you do 
not insist on my reading him." {Fam. Let., Vol. II, p. 356.) 

^It may be interesting to have Southey's comment on the same article. 
(See Southey's Letters, Vol. II, p. 307.) He says, " Bedford has seen the 
review which Scott has written of it, and which, from his account, though 
a very friendly one, is, like that of the ' Cid,' very superficial. He sees 
nothing but the naked story ; the moral feeling which pervades it has 
escaped him. I do not know whether Bedford will be able to get a para- 
graph interpolated touching upon this, and showing that there is some 
difference between a work of high imagination and a story of mere amuse- 
ment." Either Bedford was mistaken in saying that Scott had ignored the 
moral aspect of the poem, or else he succeeded in getting a passage inter- 
polated, for the review is sufficiently definite on that point. 

^Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 481. ^ Ibid., Vol. II, p. 296. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 93 

period. He once spoke of Byron as the only poet of transcen- 
dent talents that England had had since Dryden.^ At another 
time his comment was : " He wrote from impulse, never from 
effort ; and therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron 
the most genuine poetical geniuses of my time, and half a 
century before me. We have . . . many men of high poetical 
talent, but none, I think, of that ever-gushing and perennial 
fountain of natural water."^ The likenesses between Byron's 
poetical manner and Scott's own must have made it easy for 
the elder poet to recognize the power of the younger, since 
Scott was innocent of all repining or envy over the fact which 
he so freely acknowledged in later years, that Byron " beat " 
him out of the field. ^ From the time of the appearance of the 
first two cantos of Childe Harold he acknowledged the author's 
" extraordinary power,"* and even before that he had tried to 
soften Jeffrey's harsh treatment of Hours of Idleness.^ In 
1814 he was ready to say, " Byron hits the mark where I don't 
even pretend to fledge my arrow. "^ 

It was Byron, rather than Scott, who realized the debt of 
the new popular favorite to the old; and their personal rela- 
tions were of the pleasantest, though they were never intimate 
as Scott was with Southey and Wordsworth. As poets, Scott 
and Byron seem to have understood each other thoroughly, ^ 
None of the other great poets of the period did justice to 
Scott, nor did he succeed so well in defining the power of any 
of the others. His first review of Childe Harold is the most 
important of all his articles on the poetry of his time; and 
his remarks written at the death of Lord Byron, though brief, 
are not less full of good judgment. Originality, spontaneity, 
and the ability and inclination to write rapidly were traits Scott 
admired most in Byron, and in the vigor and beauty of the 

^ Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 413. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 112; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 429. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 391. * Ibid., Vol. II, p. 211. 

5 Introduction to Marmion; Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 82. 

^Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 508. 

''Byron did not altogether approve of Scott's poetry, but he felt its 
effectiveness. In his " Reply to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine," Byron 
wrote : " What have we got instead [of following Pope] ? A deluge of 
flimsy and unintelligible romances, imitated from Scott and myself, who 
have both made the best of our bad materials and erroneous system." 



94 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

poems he found the fine flower of all these qualities. "We 
cannot but repeat our conviction," he says, " that poetry, being, 
in its higher classes, an art which has for its elements sublimity 
and unaffected beauty, is more liable than any other to suffer 
from the labour of polishing. ... It must be remembered that 
we speak of the higher tones of composition; there are others 
of a subordinate character where extreme art and labour are 
not bestowed in vain. But we cannot consider over-anxious 
correction as likely to be employed with advantage upon poems 
like those of Lord Byron, which have for their object to rouse 
the imagination and awaken the passions."^ 

Byron's temperament was far from being of a sort that Scott 
could admire, though he was very susceptible to his personal 
charm : " Byron's countenance is a thing to dream of," he once 
said;^ but he felt that popular estimation did Byron injustice. 
His articles on this poet contain some of his most characteristic 
moral reflections. Something of Byron's gloominess Scott 
attributes to the sensitive poetic organization which he felt that 
Byron had in an extreme degree; but more to the perverted 
habit of looking within rather than around upon the realities 
of life, in which Providence intended men to find their happi- 
ness. The philosophy is not novel or brilliant; it is only very 
sincere and very just; and it supplies to Scott's criticism of 
Byron that element of moral reflection which we feel was nec- 
essary to the occasion.^ 

' Review of Childe Harold, Canto III, Quarterly, October, 1816. 

^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 182. 

^It should be remembered also that Scott's first review of Childe Harold 
appeared at a time when all England was condemning Byron for his treat- 
ment of Lady Byron, and that the article was thought by many to be alto- 
gether too lenient. Byron wrote to Murray expressing his pleasure in the 
review before he knew who was responsible for it, and some years later 
he wrote to Scott as follows : " To have been recorded by you in such a 
manner would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a 
time . . . was something still higher to my self-esteem. . . . Had it been 
a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt 
pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful, but not to the extent which the extra- 
ordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any 
mind capable of such sensations." {Byron's Letters and Journals, Vol. 
VI, p. 2.) See Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 510, for quotations from Byron show- 
ing his admiration for Scott. An interesting contrast between the charac- 
ters of the two poets is drawn by H. S. Legare. (See his Collected Writ- 
ings, Vol. II, p. 258.) 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 95 

But though Scott never failed to express disapproval of 
Byron's attitude toward life, he kept his criticism on this point 
essentially distinct from his judgment on the poetry. In a 
way it was impossible to separate the two subjects, and the 
public demanded some discussion of the man when his poetry 
was reviewed. But Scott's verdict on the importance of the 
poems as such was unaffected by his disapproval of the author's 
point of view. He praised Don Juan no less heartily than 
Childe Harold. 

His criticism of Don Juan is, however, to be gathered only 
from short and incidental remarks, as he never reviewed the 
poem. A satire written by R. P. Gillies is commemorated thus 
in Scott's Journal: " This poem goes to the tune of Don Juan, 
but it is the champagne after it has stood two days with the 
cork drawn."^ He called Byron " as various in composition 
as Shakspeare himself " ; and added, " this will be admitted by 
all who are acquainted with his Don Juan. . . . Neither Childe 
Harold, nor any of the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, 
contain more exquisite morsels of poetry than are to be found 
scattered through the cantos of Don Juan."^ The defence of 
Cain which Scott wrote in accepting the dedication of that 
poem to himself is well known.^ He calls it a " very grand 
and tremendous drama," and continues, " Byron has certainly 
matched Milton on his own ground. Some part of the lan- 
guage is bold, and may shock one class of readers, whose tone 
will be adopted by others out of affectation or envy. But then 
they must condemn the Paradise I^ost, if they have a mind 
to be consistent." 

Scott's comments on Byron are closely paralled by those of 
Goethe, who considered that Byron had the greatest talent of 
any man of his century.* The opinions of continental critics 
in general were similar. Among English critics Matthew 
Arnold aroused many protests when he ranked Byron as one 
of the two greatest English poets of the nineteenth century, 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 221. "^Remarks on the Death of Lord Byron. 

^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 525. 

*See Nichol's Byron (English Men of Letters), p. 205; and Arnold's 
essay on Byron. 



96 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

but his views seem perfectly rational now; and though he 
remarked upon the extravagance of Scott's phrases his own 
verdict was not very unlike that we have been considering. 

Scott's enthusiasm about the literature of his own time seems 
natural enough when we consider that the list of his notable 
contemporaries is far from exhausted after Burns, the Lake 
Poets, and Byron have been named. Campbell was a poet of 
whose powers he thought very highly, but who, he believed, 
had given only a sample of the great things he might do if 
he would cease to " fear the shadow of his own reputation." 
Before he wrote about Byron Scott had given in his review of 
Gertrude of Wyoming an exposition of his opinion as to the 
dangers of extreme care in revision. " The truth is," he says, 
"that an author cannot work upon a beautiful poem beyond 
a certain point without doing it real and irreparable injury in 
more respects than one."^ He felt that Campbell had worked, 
in many cases, beyond the " certain point." For the " impet- 
uous lyric sally," like the Mariners of England and the Battle 
of the Baltic, Scott rightly thought that Campbell excelled all 
his contemporaries. Moore was another lyrist whose poetry 
Scott greatly admired. In Moore's case, as in Southey's, the 
contemporary estimate was higher than can now be maintained, 
but Moore is to-day underrated. From what Scott says about 
him we conclude that the man's personality and his way of 
singing added much to the exquisiteness of his songs. " He 
seems almost to think in music," Scott said, " the notes and 
words are so happily suited to each other " f and, " it would 
be a delightful addition to life if T. M. had a cottage within 
two miles of one."^ Allan Cunningham was a young protege 
of Scott whose songs, " Its hame and it's hame," and " A wet 
sheet and a flowing sea," seemed to him " among the best 
going."* Another poet who received Scott's good offices was 
Hogg, whose relations with the greater man are described so 
vividly and at some points so amusingly by Lockhart. Scott 
called him a " wonderful creature for his opportunities."^ 

^Quarterly Review, May, 1809. ^Journal, Vol. I, p. 9. 

^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 341. * Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 70. 

^Jbid., Vol. II, p. 306. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 97 

For the poet Crabbe, Scott, like Byron and Wordsworth/ 
had a steady and high admiration. In the Sunday evening 
readings that Lockhart describes as being so pleasant a feature 
of the life of the family in Edinburgh, Crabbe was perhaps 
the chief standing resource after Shakspere.^ His work was 
particularly recommended to the young people of the family, ^ 
and when the venerable poet visited the Scotts in 1822, he was 
received as a man whom they always looked upon as nobly 
gifted. Scott once wrote of him : " I think if he had cultivated 
the sublime and the pathetic instead of the satirical cast of 
poetry, he must have stood very high (as indeed he does at 
any rate) on the list of British poets. His Sir Eustace Grey 
and The Hall of Justice indicate prodigious talent."* Scott did 
not like Crabbe's choice of subjects,^ but he appreciated the 
" force and vigour " of a poet whom students of our own day 
are once more beginning to admire, after a period during which 
he was practically ignored. 

Scott's very high estimation of Joanna Baillie has already 
been mentioned.^ In this case as in many others he was proud 
and happy in the personal friendship of the writer whose works 
he admired. He once wrote to Miss Edgeworth : " I have 
always felt the value of having access to persons of talent and 
genius to be the best part of a literary man's prerogative."^ 
Almost the earliest of the writers for whose friendship Scott 

1 Byron said, " Crabbe's the man, but he has got a coarse and impracti- 
cable subject." (Moore's Life and Letters of Byron, Vol. IV, pp. 63-4.) 
Leslie Stephen remarks that Crabbe " was admired by Byron in his rather 
wayward mood of Pope-worship, as the last representative of the legitimate 
school." (English Literature and Society in the i8th Century, p. 207.) 

^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 197. 

^The reader will at once recall the ingenuous remark of Sophia Scott 
when she was asked, shortly after its appearance, how she liked The Lady 
of the Lake. She said, " Oh, I have not read it ; Papa says there's nothing 
so bad for young people as reading bad poetry." (Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 
130. See also the Life of Irving, Vol. I, p. 444.) 

* Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 94. 

^Correspondence of C. K. Sharpe, Vol. I, p. 353. 

^See Marmion, introduction to Canto III, and other passages noted by 
Adolphus in the Letters to Heber, p. 295. See also Familiar Letters, Vol. 
I, p. 198, and the passage in Lockhart (Vol. II, p. 132), in which James 
Ballantyne reports Scott as saying to him, " If you wish to speak of a 
real poet, Joanna Baillie is now the highest genius of our country." 

''Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 306. 
7 



98 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF lite;rature 

felt grateful was Matthew Lewis, famed as the author of The 
Monk. Lewis was also something of a poet, and was really- 
helpful to Scott in giving him advice on literary subjects. 
Though Scott perceived that Lewis's talents " would not stand 
much creaming "^ he continued to regard him as one who had 
had high imagination and a " finer ear for rhythm than 
Byron's." 

Scott felt that his own taste in respect to poetry became more 
rigorous as he grew older. In 1823 in a letter to Miss Baillie 
he commented on Mrs. Hemans as " somewhat too poetical for 
my taste — too many flowers, I mean, and too little fruit — but 
that may be the cynical criticism of an elderly gentleman; for 
it is certain that when I was young I read verses of every kind 
with infinitely more indulgence, because with more pleasure 
than I can now do — the more shame for me now to refuse the 
complaisance which I have had so often to solicit."^ Similarly 
he speaks in the preface to Kenilworth of having once been 
delighted with the poems of Mickle and Langhorne : " There 
is a period in youth when the mere power of numbers has a 
more strong effect on ear and imagination than in after-life." 
With these comments we may put Lockhart's sagacious re- 
mark : " His propensity to think too well of other men's works 
sprung, of course, mainly from his modesty and good nature; 
but the brilliancy of his imagination greatly sustained the delu- 
sion. It unconsciously gave precision to the trembling outline, 
and life and warmth to the vapid colours before him."^ This 
and his kindness would account for the latter half of the obser- 
vation made by his publisher : " I like well Scott's ain bairns — 
but heaven preserve me from those of his fathering."* 

I have found no reference to Landor, a poet whom Southey 
and Wordsworth read with eagerness, but Mr. Forster makes 
this statement in his Biography of Landor: " Among Landor's 
papers I found a list, prepared by himself, of resemblances to 
passages of his own writing to be found in Scott's Tales of 
the Crusaders. There were several from Gebir. . . . The 

^Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 359; also Vol. I, p. 255; and Constable's Corre- 
spondence, Vol. Ill, p. 300. 

^Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 117. ^Ibid., Vol. V, p. 448. 

*Ibid., Vol. II, p. 14. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 99 

poem had made a great impression on Scott, who read it at 
Southey's suggestion."! Forster also notes the fact that 
Southey, in a letter to Scott written in 1812, spoke very highly 
of Landor's Count Julian.^ I am similarly unable to cite any 
comment by Scott on the writings of Lamb. Was it because 
Scott's genius clung to Scotland and Lamb's to London, that 
the two seemed so little to notice each other? It does seem 
odd that Scott never refers to the delightful Specimens of Eng- 
lish Dramatic Poets. At one time Lamb wrote to Sir Walter 
asking a contribution toward a fund that was being raised to 
help William Godwin out of pecuniary troubles, and Scott 
replied, through the artist Haydon, with a cheque for ten 
pounds and a pleasant message to Mr. Lamb, " whom I should 
be happy to see in Scotland, though I have not forgotten his 
metropolitan preference of houses to rocks, and citizens to wild 
rustics and highland men."^ Hazlitt and Hunt were two other 
writers whose literary work Scott ignored.* This, as well as 
his neglect of Lamb's and DeQuincey's essays, may be due 
largely to the fact that he seldom read newspapers and maga- 
zines, and these writers were journalists and contributors to 
periodicals. Voracious reader as Scott was, he had to econo- 
mize time somewhere, and the hours saved from papers could 
be given to books. We do find one or two references to these 
men as political writers. Scott hoped Lpckhart would learn, 
as editor of the Quarterly, to despise petty adversaries, for " to 
take notice of such men as Hazlitt and Hunt in the Quarterly 
would be to introduce them into a world which is scarce 
conscious of their existence."^ 

^Forster, Vol. I, p. 84, note. ^Ibid., Vol. I, p. 95. 

^Haydon's Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 356. 

* Hunt says Scott was interested in reading The Story of Rimini. See 
Hunt's Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 260. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 22. Scott wrote as follows to Lockhart after the 
appearance of Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries : " Hunt has 
behaved like a hyena to Byron, whom he has dug up to girn and howl 
over him in the same breath." Mr. Lang makes this comment : " Leigh 
Hunt . . . had gone out of his way to insult Sir Walter and to make the 
most baseless insinuations against him. Scott probably never mentioned 
Leigh Hunt's name publicly in his life, and he refers to the insults neither 
in his correspondence nor in his Journal." (Lang's Life of Lockhart, Vol. 
n, pp. 22 and 24.) Hunt evidently thought that Scott was partly respon- 



100 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

Among novelists, those of Scott's contemporaries to whom 
he gave the highest praise were women. This is, however, to 
be expected, and it is natural to find Jane Austen receiving the 
highest praise of all ; since Scott was emphatically not of the 
tribe of critics who are able to appreciate only one kind of 
novel or poem. Her novels seemed to grow upon him and he 
read them often. It was in connection with her " exquisite 
touch " that he was moved to reflect, in the words so often 
quoted from his Journal, " The Big Bow-wow strain I can do 
myself like any now going." ^ Among the expressions of 
admiration which occur in his review of Emma,'^ Scott records 
a characteristic bit of protest in regard to the tendency of Miss 
Austen and other novelists to make prudence the guiding mo- 
tive of all their favorite young women characters, especially 
in matters of the heart. He did not like this pushing out of 
Cupid to make way for so moderate a virtue as prudence; he 
thought that it is often good for young people to fall in love 
without regard to worldly considerations. Scott rated Miss 
Edgeworth nearly as high as Miss Austen, and hers is the 
added honor of having inspired the author of Waverley with 
a desire to emulate her power. ^ With these two novelists he 
associated Miss Ferrier, as well as the somewhat earlier writer, 
Fanny Burney.* 

Aside from these women and Henry Mackenzie, perhaps the 
highest praise that Scott bestowed on any contemporary novel- 

sible for the articles in Blackwood on the Cockney School. He says, 
" Unfortunately some of the knaves were not destitute of talent : the 
younger were tools of older ones who kept out of sight." (Hunt's Lord 
Byron, etc., Vol. I, p. 423.) In his Autobiography, Hunt says, " Sir Walter 
Scott confessed to Mr. Severn at Rome that the truth respecting Keats had 
prevailed." (Vol. H, p. 44.) Mr. Lang points out that though Colvin 
said of Scott (in his Life of Keats) " that he was in some measure privy 
to the Cockney School outrages seems certain," he afterwards recanted the 
statement. (In his edition of Keats's Letters, p. 60, note. See Lang's 
Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 196-8.) Scott invited Lamb to Abbotsford when 
Lamb was looked upon as a leader of the Cockney School. (Lang's Scott, 
P- 52.) 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 155 ; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 476, and Vol. V, p. 380. 

^Quarterly, October, 1815. 

^Postscript to Waverley, and General Introduction. 

*For references to the group of women novelists who were so success- 
ful in depicting manners, see the Life of Charlotte Smith; the Postscript 
to Waverley; the Introduction to St. Ronan's Well; Journal, Vol. I, p. 164. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 101 

ist was given to Cooper. Here, as in the case of Byron, Scott 
seemed to ignore the other writer's indebtedness to himself. 
He speaks, in the general preface to the Waverley Novels, of 
" that striking field in which Mr. Cooper has achieved so many 
triumphs " ; and at another time calls him " the justly celebrated 
American novelist." In his Journal he comments on The Red 
Rover^ and The Prairie;^ The Pilot he recommends warmly in 
a letter to Miss Edgeworth.^ 

The personal relations between '' the Scotch and American 
lions," as Scott called himself and Cooper, when they met in 
Parisian society in 1826,'' had some interesting consequences. 
Cooper suggested to Scott that he try to secure for himself 
part of the profits arising from the publication of his works in 
America, by entering them as the property of some citizen. 
They finally concluded to substitute for this plan one suggested 
by Scott, which involved the writing by the Author of Waver- 
ley, of a letter addressed to Cooper, to be transmitted by him 
to some American publisher who would undertake the publica- 
tion of an authorized edition of which half the profits should 
go to the author. Future works were to be sent over to this 
publisher in advance of their appearance in England. The 
letter was really an appeal to the justice of the American people, 
and contained an allusion to the publication of Irving's works 
in England according to a plan very similar to that proposed 
by Scott. But the scheme failed here in America, and appa- 
rently the letter was not made public until Cooper, irritated 
by the appearance in Lockhart's Life of Scott of Sir Walter's 
comments on his personal manner,'' explained the affair (except 
the reason for dropping the plan), and published the corre- 

^ Journal, Vol. II, p. iii. ^Ibid., Vol. II, p. 116. 

^Lockhart, Vol. IV, 164. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 299 ; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 65. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 295 ; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 62. 

^The reference as given by Lockhart is as follows: "This man, who 
has shown so much genius, has a good deal of the manners, or want of 
manners, peculiar to his countrymen." {Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 62.) Cooper 
observes in regard to this point : " The manners of most Europeans strike 
us as exaggerated, while we appear cold to them. Sir Walter Scott was 
certainly so obliging as to say many flattering things to me, which I, as 
certainly, did not repay in kind. As Johnson said of his interview with 
George the Third, it was not for me to bandy compliments with my sover- 



102 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

spondence in the Knickerbocker Magazine for April, 1838.^ 
Later in the same year Cooper wrote a severe review of the 
biography of Scott, attacking his character in a way that seems 
absurdly exaggerated.^ Yet Charles Sumner seems to have 
thought that Cooper made his points, and Mr. Lounsbury is 
inclined to agree with him.^ 

eign. At that time the diary was a sealed book to the world, and I did 
not know the importance he attached to such civilities." It is a pity that 
the transcriber of the passage in the Journal changed " manner," which 
was the word Scott wrote, to the more objectionable " manners." (Journal, 
Vol. I, p. 295.) 

^ Scott's letter was substantially as follows : " I have considered in all 
its bearings the matter which your kindness has suggested. Upon many 
former occasions I have been urged by my friends in America to turn to 
some advantage the sale of my writings in your country, and render that 
of pecuniary avail as an individual which I feel as the highest compliment 
as an author. I declined all these proposals, because the sale of this coun- 
try produced me as much profit as I desired, and more — far more — than I 
deserved. But my late heavy losses have made my situation somewhat 
different, and have rendered it a point of necessity and even duty to 
neglect no means of making the sale of my works effectual to the extrica- 
tion of my affairs, which can be honorably and honestly resorted to. If 
therefore Mr. Carey, or any other publishing gentleman of credit and 
character, should think it worth while to accept such an offer, I am willing 
to convey to him the exclusive right of publishing the Life of Napoleon, 
and my future works in America, making it always a condition, which 
indeed will be dictated by the publisher's own interest, that this monopoly 
shall not be used for the purpose of raising the price of the work to my 
American readers, but only for that of supplying the public at the usual 
terms. . . . 

" At any rate, if what I propose should not be found of force to prevent 
piracy, I cannot but think from the generosity and justice of American 
feeling, that a considerable preference would be given in the market to the 
editions emanating directly from the publisher selected by the author, and 
in the sale of which the author had some interest. 

"If the scheme shall altogether fail, it at least infers no loss, and there- 
fore is, I think, worth the experiment. It is a fair and open appeal to the 
liberality, perhaps in some sort to the justice, of a great people ; and I 
think I ought not in the circumstances to decline venturing upon it. I 
have done so manfully and openly, though not perhaps without some pain- 
ful feelings, which however are more than compensated by the interest 
you have taken in this unimportant matter, of which I will not soon lose 
the recollection." (Knickerbocker Magazine, Vol. XI, p. 380 ff., April, 
1838.) 

^Knickerbocker, Vol. XII, p. 349 ff-, October, 1838. 

3 In a letter written in January, 1839, Sumner said, speaking 'of Cooper's 
article, " I think a proper castigation is applied to the vulgar minds of 
Scott and Lockhart." (See Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, by 
Edward L. Pierce, Vol. II, p. 38; and Lounsbury's Cooper, p. 160.) 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 103 

One of the milder strictures in Cooper's review was as fol- 
lows : " As he was ambitious of, so was he careful to preserve, 
his personal popularity, of which we have a striking proof in 
the studied kindnesses that for years were laid before this 
country in deeds and words, as compared with his real acts and 
sentiments toward America and Americans which are now 
revealed in his letters." A passage which doubtless roused 
Cooper's ire may be quoted. Of the Americans Scott said, in 
a letter to Miss Edgeworth, " They are a people possessed of 
very considerable energy, quickened and brought into eager 
action by an honourable love of their country and pride in their 
institutions ; but they are as yet rude in their ideas of social inter- 
course, and totally ignorant, speaking generally, of all the art of 
good breeding, which consists chiefly in a postponement of one's 
own petty wishes or comforts to those of others. By rude 
questions and observations, an absolute disrespect to other 
people's feelings, and a ready indulgence of their own, they 
make one feverish in their company, though perhaps you may 
be ashamed to confess the reason. But this will wear off and 
is already wearing away. Men, when they have once got 
benches, will soon fall into the use of cushions. They are 
advancing in the lists of our literature, and they will not be 
long deficient in the petite morale, especially as they have, like 
ourselves, the rage for travelling."^ 

Scott liked George Ticknor,^ and he called Washington Ir- 
ving " one of the best and pleasantest acquaintances I have 
made this many a day."^ In later life he congratulated him- 

^Lockhart, Vol. IV, pp. 163-4. Ubid., Vol. Ill, p. 262. 

^Ihid., Vol. Ill, p. 131, note; Fanu Let., Vol. I, p. 440- "Walter Scott 
was the first transatlantic author to bear witness to the merit of Knicker- 
bocker," wrote P. M. Irving in his Life of Washington Irving. Henry 
Brevoort presented Scott with a copy of the second edition in 1813, and 
received this reply : " I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncom- 
mon degree of entertainment which I have received from the most excel- 
lently jocose history of New York. I am sensible that as a stranger to 
American parties and politics I must lose much of the concealed satire of 
the piece, but I must own that looking at the simple and obvious meaning 
only, I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean 
Swift, as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. ... I think too there 
are passages which indicate that the author possesses powers of a differ- 
ent kind, and has some touches which remind me much of Sterne." {Life 



104 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

self on having from the first foreseen Irving's success/ When 
we remember also that Scott quotes from Poor Richard/ refers 
to Cotton Mather's Magnolia,^ and speaks of "the American 
Brown " as one whose novels might be reprinted in England, * 
we ought probably to conclude that his acquaintance with our 
literature was as comprehensive as could have been expected. 
Among continental writers belonging to his period, Goethe 
was very properly the one for whom Scott had the strongest 
admiration. But we find comparatively few references to his 
reading the great German after the early period of translation. 
Throughout Lockhart's Life of Scott it is evident that the 
biographer had a more thorough acquaintance with Goethe 
than had Scott, and it seems probable that the younger man 
influenced the elder in his judgment on Faust and on Goethe's 
character. In the Introduction to Quentin Diirivard we find 
an interesting comment on Goethe's success in creating a really 
wicked Mephistopheles, who escapes the noble dignity that 
Milton and Byron gave to their pictures of Satan. Goethe and 
Scott exchanged letters once in 1827,^ and it was a personal 
grief to Sir Walter that the German poet's death prevented 
a visit Scott proposed to make him in 1832. In Anne of Geier- 
stein Goethe is called " an author born to arouse the slumber- 

of Irving, Vol. I, p. 240.) When, in 1819, Irving needed money, he wrote 
to Scott for advice about publishing the Sketch Book in England. " Scott 
was the only literary man," he says, " to whom I felt that I could talk 
about myself and my petty concerns with the confidence and freedom that 
I would to an old friend — nor was I deceived. From the first moment that 
I mentioned my work to him in a letter, he took a decided and effective 
interest in it, and has been to me an invaluable friend." (Vol. I, p. 456.) 
At this time Scott asked Irving to accept the editorship of a political news- 
paper in Edinburgh, an offer which Irving of course refused. {Fam. Let., 
Vol. II, p. 60 ; Life of Irving, Vol. I, pp. 441-2, and Vol. Ill, pp. 272-3.) 
Scott called the Sketch Book " positively beautiful." He was by some 
people supposed to be the author. In this connection it was said of him 
that his " very numerous disguises," and his " well-known fondness for 
literary masquerading, seem to have gained him the advantage of being 
suspected as the author of every distinguished work that is published." 
(Letter by Lady Lyttleton, in Life of Irving, Vol. II, p. 21.) 

^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 131 ; Life of Irving, Vol. I, p. 240. 

^Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 161. 

^Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, Letter II. 

* Constable's Correspondence, Vol. Ill, p. 199. 

^Lockhart, Vol. V, pp. 100-104. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 105 

ing fame of his country " ;^ and in the Journal Scott character- 
izes him as " the Ariosto at once and ahnost the Voltaire of 
Germany." - The suggestion for the character of Fenella in 
Peveril of the Peak was taken from Goethe, as we learn by 
Scott's acknowledgment in the Introduction. Another Ger- 
man from whom Scott borrowed a suggestion — this time 
for the unlucky " White Lady of Avenel " — was the 
Baron de la Motte Fouque. Scott was evidently interested in 
his work, though he thought Fouque sometimes used such a 
profusion of historical and antiquarian lore that readers would 
find it difficult to follow the narrative.^ Sir Walter asked his 
son to tell the Baroness de la Motte Fouque that he had been 
much interested in her writings and those of the Baron, and 
added, " It will be civil, for folks like to know that they are 
known and respected beyond the limits of their own country." * 
In the literary circles of Paris Scott more than once experi- 
enced the pleasure of finding himself " known and respected " 
by foreigners,^ and he had intimate relations with men of letters 
in London. On one of his visits there he saw Byron almost 
every morning for some time, at the house of Murray the pub- 
lisher. In Edinburgh society Scott was naturally a prominent 
figure, being noted for his fund of anecdote and his superior 
gifts in presiding at dinners. But however much his kindly 
personal feeling is reflected in his comments on the literary 
work of his friends, he was too well-balanced to assume any- 
thing of the patronizing tone that such success as his might 
have made natural to another sort of man. His fellow-poets 
thought him a delightful person whom they liked so much that 
they could almost forgive the preposterous success of his facile 
and unimportant poetry. 

^Vol. I, p. 371. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 359 ; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 100. See also Journal, 
Vol. II, pp. 483-4. 

^Review of Hoffmann's novels, Foreign Quarterly Review, July, 1827. 

^Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 19. 

^ M. Maigron says, speaking of the vogue of Scott in France : " On peut 
affirmer meme que, de 1820 a 1830, aucun nom frangais ne fut en France 
aussi connu et aussi glorieux." (Le Roman Historique a I'Spoque Roman- 
tique, p. 99. See also pp. 100-133.) 



106 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

His full-blooded enjoyment of life and literature tempered 
without obscuring his critical instinct, and though he was " will- 
ing to be pleased by those who were desirous to give pleasure,"^ 
he noted the weak points of men to whose power he gladly paid 
tribute. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Byron, whom 
he classed as the great English poets of his time, may, with the 
exception of Southey, be given the places he assigned to them. 
In regard to Byron, Scott expressed a critical estimate that the 
public is only now getting ready to accept after a long period 
of depreciating Byron's genius. The men whose work Scott 
judged fairly and sympathetically represent widely different 
types. With some of them he was connected by the new im- 
pulse that they were imparting to English poetry, but he was 
so close to the transition period that he could look backward 
to his predecessors with no sense of strangeness. He was 
never inclined to quarrel with the " erroneous system " of a 
poem which he really liked. His comments on Byron's Dark- 
ness suggest that if he had read more than he did of Shelley 
and others among his younger contemporaries he might have 
found much to reprehend, but he held that " we must not limit 
poetical merit to the class of composition which exactly suits 
one's own particular taste." ^ Among novelists even less than 
among poets can we trace a " school " to which he paid special 
allegiance. He read and enjoyed all sorts of good stories, 
growing in this respect more catholic in his tastes, though per- 
haps more severe in his standards, as he grew older. 

In speaking of Scott's relations with his contemporaries, we 
must especially remember his ardent interest in those realities 
of life which he considered greater than the greatest books. In 
one of his reviews he laid stress on the merit of writing on con- 
temporary events,^ and he seemed to think there was too little 

^The phrase is quoted from Scott's article on the Life and Works of 
John Home, in which it is applied to Home's critical work. The same 
idea occurs frequently in Scott's books, as indicating one of the finest 
graces of life. It was one which Sir Walter was foremost in practicing 
in all his social relations. 

^ He was talking about Pope. See the Recollections, by R. P. Gillies, 
Eraser's, xii : 253 (Sept., 1835). 

^Review of The Battles of Talavera, Quarterly, November, 1809. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 107 

of such celebration. There are many evidences of his great 
admiration for those of his contemporaries who were men of 
action, but it is sufficient to remember that the only man in 
whose presence Scott felt abashed was the Duke of Wellington, 
for he counted that famous commander the greatest man of 
his time. 



CHAPTER V 
Scott as a Critic of His Own Work 

Lack of dogmatism about his own work — Harmony between his 
talents and his tastes— His conviction of the value of spontaneity and 
abundance — Merits of a rapid meter — Greater care necessary in verse 
writing a reason why he turned to prose— His attitude in regard to 
revision — Modesty about his own work — His opinion of the popular 
judgment — Importance of novelty — Rivalry with Byron— Scott's at- 
tempts to keep ahead of his imitators — Devices to secure novelty — His 
resolution to write history — Historical motives of his novels — His com- 
ments on the use of historical material— His verdict in regard to his 
descriptive abilities and methods— Lack of emphasis on the ethical 
aspect of his work— His judgment on the position of the novel in 
literature. 

" Scott is invariably his own best critic," says Mr. Andrew 
Lang.^ Of this Scott was not himself in the least convinced, 
and when we recall how, to please his printer, James Ballantyne, 
he tacked on a last scene to Rokehy, resuscitated the dead 
Athelstane in Ivanhoe, and eliminated the main motive of St. 
Ronan's Well, we wish he had been more uniformly inclined 
to trust his own critical judgment. 

He never scheduled the qualities of his own genius. A man 
who could sincerely say what he did about literary immortality 
would not be apt to develop any dogma in regard to his 
artistic achievement. " Let me please my own generation," he 
said, "and let those that come after us judge of their taste and 
my performances as they please ; the anticipation of their 
neglect or censure will affect me very little."^ His opinions 
about his own work are to be deduced largely from casual 
remarks scattered through his letters and journals. His intro- 
ductions to his novels, in the Opus Magnum, are valuable 
sources, however, and the " Epistle " preceding The Fortunes 
of Nigel is a mine of material, though, unlike the later intro- 
ductions, it was written " according to the trick," when he was 

1 Editor's Introduction to Montrose, Border edition of the Waverley 
Novels. 

^ Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 125. 

108 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 109 

still preserving his anonymity. We have an article which he 
wrote for the Quarterly on two of his own books, the review 
of Tales of My Landlord.^ His criticism of the work of other 
people is also very helpful in this connection, since from it we 
may learn what qualities he wished to find in poetry and in 
the novel, as well as in history, biography, and criticism, the 
fields in which he did much, though less famous work. 

The student of his criticism is struck at once by the fact 
that the qualities which Scott particularly admired in literature 
were those for which he was himself preeminent. Yet he can- 
not be accused, as Poe may be, of constructing a theory that 
those types of art were greatest which he found himself most 
skilful in exemplifying. Scott's nature was of that most efficient 
kind that enables a man to do such things as he likes to see 
done. We cannot argue that he was incapable of attending to 
minute niceties and on this account chose to emphasize the 
large qualities of literature. For notwithstanding that lack of 
delicacy which characterized his physical senses and which we 
might therefore conclude would affect his literary discernment, 
we have among his small poems some that show his power, 
occasionally at least, to satisfy the most fastidious critic of 
detail. Evidently he could write in more than one style, and 
though the style he used most is undoubtedly that which was 
most natural to him, it was also that which he thought, on 
other grounds than the character of his own talents, best worth 
while. Yet he had so little vanity in regard to his own work 
that he could hardly understand his success, though it depended 
on those very qualities which, in other authors, excited his 
utmost admiration. 

One of his fundamental opinions about literary work was 
that to write much and with abundant spontaneity is better 
than to polish minutely. Over and over again we find this 
idea expressed, most noticeably in connection with the poet 

1 Quarterly, January, 1817. Scott evidently wrote this article chiefly for 
the purpose of defending the historical accuracy of Old Mortality. He 
also wished to show that The Black Dwarf was founded on fact ; and he 
devoted some space, as will appear in the passage quoted below (pp. iii— 
112), to a discussion of the artistic aspects of these and the earlier 
Waverley novels. 



110 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

Campbell, whom Scott could scarcely forgive for making so 
little use of his poetical gifts. He applauded the much-criti- 
cised fertility of Byron, whose genius was in that respect akin 
to his own. " I never knew name or fame burn brighter by 
over-chary keeping of it,"^ Scott said. The greatest writers, 
he observed, have been the most voluminous. His position 
was one that could be fortified by inductive reasoning, con- 
trasting in this respect with theories which seem plausible only 
until they are tested by actual facts, as, for example, Poe's 
idea that long poems lose effectiveness by their length. But 
perhaps Scott did not sufficiently take into account the circular 
nature of his argument; for since the world has refused to 
consider the men very great who " never spoke out," the truth 
is not so much that a great man ought to write copiously as 
that if a man does not write copiously he will not be counted 
great. Scott seemed to think it was mere wilfulness that pre- 
vented a man of such gifts as Campbell's from writing 
abundantly. 

The corresponding disadvantages of rapid composition were 
of course evident to him. From the first appearance of the 
Lay to the end of his career he lamented his inability to plan 
a story in an orderly manner and follow out the scheme; he 
admitted also that " the misfortune of writing fast is that one 
cannot at the same time write concisely."^ Of Marmion he 
told Southey, " I had not time to write the poem shorter."^ 

His grief on these points seems qualified, however, by a con- 
viction that he could not write with deliberation and method 
and still produce the effect of vivacious spontaneity. He 
thought Fielding was almost the only novelist who had thor- 
oughly succeeded in combining these various admirable quali- 
ties,'^ and he said in this connection, " To demand equal cor- 
rectness and felicity in those who may follow in the track of 
that illustrious novelist, would be to fetter too much the power 
of giving pleasure, by surrounding it with penal rules ; since 
of this sort of light literature it may be especially said — tout 

^Journal, Vol. II, p. 269. '^ Ibid., Vol. II, p. 276. 

^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 96. 

* Introductory epistle to Nigel; Fam, Let., Vol. I, p. 28. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 111 

genre est permis, hors le genre ennuyeux."^ " To confess to 
you the truth," says the " Author " in the Introductory Epistle 
to Nigel, " the works and passages in which I have succeeded, 
have uniformly been written with the greatest rapidity; and 
when I have seen some of these placed in opposition with 
others, and commended as more highly finished, I could appeal 
to pen and standish, that the parts in which I have come feebly 
off were by much the more laboured." He attempted to write 
Rokeby with great care, but threw the first version into the 
fire because he concluded that he had " corrected the spirit out 
of it, as a lively pupil is sometimes flogged into a dunce by a 
severe schoolmaster."^ He was better satisfied with the result 
when he resumed his pen in his "old Cossack manner."^ 
Similarly he writes of John Home's tragedy, Douglas, that the 
finest scene was, " we learn with pleasure but without sur- 
prise," unchanged from the first draft;* and elsewhere he 
speaks of the greater chance for popularity of the "bold, de- 
cisive, but light-touched strain of poetry or narrative in literary 
composition," over the "more highly-wrought performance."^ 
A good exposition of Scott's real opinion in regard to his 
own style is to be found in his review of Tales of My Landlord. 
Some parts of the article were probably inserted by his friend 
William Erskine, but the section I quote bears unmistakable 
evidence that it was written by the author himself, for it ex- 
presses that combined reprobation and approval of his style 
which is amusingly characteristic of him. He says : " Our 
author has told us that it was his object to present a series of 
scenes and characters connected with Scotland in its past and 
present state, and we must own that his stories are so slightly 
constructed as to remind us of the showman's thread with 
which he draws up his pictures and presents them successively 
to the eye of the spectator. . . . Against this slovenly indifiFer- 
ence we have already remonstrated, and we again enter our 

^Introduction to the Monastery. 
'^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 258. 

^Rokeby, Canto VI, stanza 26; Waverley, Vol. II, pp. 399-400; Journal, 
Vol. I, p. 117; Lockhart, Vol. IV, pp. 447-8. 

* Review of the Life and Works of John Home, Quarterly, June, 1827. 
^Review of Southery's Life of Bunyan, Quarterly, October, 1830. 



112 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

protest. . . . We are the more earnest in this matter, because 
it seems that the author errs chiefly from carelessness. There 
may be something of system in it, however, for we have re- 
marked, that with an attention which amounts even to affecta- 
tion, he has avoided the common language of narrative, and 
thrown his story, as much as possible, into a dramatic shape. 
In many cases this has added greatly to the effect, by keeping 
both the actors and action continually before the reader, and 
placing him, in some measure, in the situation of an audience 
at a theater, who are compelled to gather the meaning of the 
scene from what the dramatis personae say to each other, and 
not from any explanation addressed immediately to themselves. 
But though the author gain this advantage, and thereby compel 
the reader to think of the personages of the novel and not of 
the writer, yet the practice, especially pushed to the extent we 
have noticed, is a principal cause of the flimsiness and inco- 
herent texture of which his greatest admirers are compelled 
to complain. "'^ 

Lockhart points out that the fruit of Scott's study of Dryden 
may have been to fortify his opinion as to what the greatness 
of literature really consists in, and applies to Scott himself 
some of the phrases used in the characterization of the earlier 
poet. " ' Rapidity of conception, a readiness of expressing 
every idea, without losing anything by the way ' ; ' perpetual 
animation and elasticity of thought ' ; and language ' never 
laboured, never loitering, never (in Dryden's own phrase) 
cursedly confined,' " are set over against " pointed and nicely 
turned lines, sedulous study, and long and repeated correction 
and revision," and are pronounced the superior virtues.^ The 
concluding paragraph of Scott's review of a poem on the 
Battle of Talavera exemplifies his use of this doctrine. " We 
have shunned, in the present instance," he says, " the unpleas- 
ant task of pointing out and dwelling upon individual inaccu- 
racies. There are several hasty expressions, flat lines, and 
deficient rhymes, which prove to us little more than that the 
composition was a hurried one. These, in a poem of a differ- 
ent description, we should have thought it our duty to point 

'^Quarterly, January, 1817. "^Lockhart, Vol. II, pp. 7-8. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 113 

out to the notice of the author. But after all it is the spirit 
of a poet that we consider as demanding our chief attention; 
and upon its ardour or rapidity must finally hinge our applause 
or condemnation."^ 

Scott's opinions about meters reflect the same taste. He 
persuaded himself, when he was writing The Lady of the Lake, 
that the eight-syllable line is "more congenial to the English 
language — more favourable to narrative poetry at least — than 
that which has been commonly termed heroic verse," ^ and he 
proceeded to show that the first half-dozen lines of Pope's Iliad 
were each " bolstered out " with a superfluous adjective. " The 
case is different in descriptive poetry," he added, " because there 
epithets, if they are happily selected, are rather to be sought after 
than avoided. . . . But if in narrative you are frequently com- 
pelled to tag your substantives with adjectives, it must fre- 
quently happen that you are forced upon those that are merely 
commonplaces." He mentions other beauties of his favorite 
verse, — the opportunities for variation by double rhyme and by 
occasionally dropping a syllable, and the correspondence be- 
tween the length of line and our natural intervals between 
punctuation, — but gives as his final excuse for using it his 
" better knack at this ' false gallop ' of verse." The argument 
is ingenious enough, but his analysis of heroic verse has only 
a limited application, and his last reason probably was, as he 
was candid enough to admit, the most weighty. George Ellis 
replied to his defence thus : " I don't think, after all the elo- 
quence with which you plead for your favourite metre, that 
you really like it from any other motive than that sainte 
paresse — ^that delightful indolence — which induces one to de- 
light in those things which we can do with the least fatigue." ^ 
This seems hardly a fair return for the poet's appeal to Ellis 
in one of the epistles of Marmion:^ 

" Come listen ! bold in thy applause, 
The bard shall scorn pedantic laws." 

Another introduction in the same poem is given up to a justi- 

^ Quarterly, November, 1809. ^ Ibid., Vol. II, p. 129. 

^Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 128. * Epistle prefixed to Canto V. 

8 



114 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

fication of the author's '' unconfined " style, on the score of his 
love for the wild songs of his own country and the freedom of 
his early training.^ 

Scott practically never rewrote his prose, and the result gave 
Hazlitt opportunity to say:- " We should think the writer could 
not possibly read the manuscript after he has once written it, 
or overlook the press."^ His habit of carrying two trains of 
thought on together was also responsible for slips in diction 
and syntax. An amanuensis working for him noticed this pecu- 
liarity, and Scott said in his Journal: " There must be two cur- 
rents of ideas going on in my mind at the same time. . . . 
I always laugh when I hear people say. Do one thing at once. 
I have done a dozen things at once all my life."* 

But the making of poetry required more attention. " Verse 
I write twice, and sometimes three times over,"^ he said, and 
one is moved to wonder whether the distaste for writing poetry, 

* Epistle prefixed to Canto III. 

^Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age, art. Sir Walter Scott ; see Letters to Heher, 
P- 75 ff- 

^It is hard to say just how much he accomplished by the proof-reading, 
which, to judge by his Journal, he habitually performed. He wrote to 
Kirkpatrick Sharpe in i8og, after seeing a new number of the Quarterly : 
" I am a little disconcerted with the appearance of one or two of my own 
articles, which I have had no opportunity to revise in proof." {Sharpe' s 
Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 370.) Lockhart gives an interesting sample 
of a sheet of Scott's poetry tentatively revised by Ballantyne and reworked 
by the author. {Lockhart, Vol. Ill, pp. 32-5.) It is certain that Ballan- 
tyne made many suggestions, some of which Scott accepted and some of 
which he summarily rejected. In Hogg's Domestic Manners of Scott we 
find the following account of what the printer said when Hogg reported 
that Sir Walter was to correct some proofs for him : " He correct them 
for you ! Lord help you and him both ! I assure you if he had nobody 
to correct after him, there would be a bonny song through the country. 
He is the most careless and incorrect writer that ever was born, for a 
voluminous and popular writer, and as for sending a proof sheet to him, 
we may as well keep it in the oiSce. He never heeds it. . . . He will 
never look at either your proofs or his own, unless it be for a few minutes 
amusement" (pp. 242-3). When he wrote to Miss Baillie that he had read 
the proofs of a play of hers which was being published in Edinburgh, he 
added, " but this will not ensure their being altogether correct, for in 
despite of great practice, Ballantyne insists I have a bad eye." {Familiar 
Letters, Vol. I, p. 173.) 

'^Journal, Vol. II, p. 79; also 234 and 239; Lockhart, Vol. V, pp. 116 
and 240. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 117; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 448. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 115 

that he professed about 1822, arose largely from a growing 
aversion to what he probably considered extreme care in com- 
position.^ A series of three comments on his own poetry may 
be given to illustrate his widely varying moods in regard to 
it. They are all taken from letters written not far from the 
time when Marmion was published. " As for poetry, it is very 
little labour to me ; indeed 'twere pity of my life should I spend 
much time on the light and loose sort of poetry which alone I 
can pretend to write." ^ "I believe no man now alive writes 
more rapidly than I do (no great recommendation), but I never 
think of making verses till I have a sufficient stock of poetical 
ideas to supply them.'" " If I ever write another poem, I am 
determined to make every single couplet of it as perfect as 
my uttermost care and attention can possibly effect."* In spite 
of this momentary resolution to take more pains with his next 
poem, he was unable to do so when the time came; or if, as 
in the case of Rokeby he did make the attempt, the results 
seemed to him unsatisfactory. Yet verse required much more 
careful finishing than prose, even when it was written by 
Scott, and this fact has been too little emphasized in discus- 
sions of his transition from verse to prose romances. 

Scott's temperamental aversion to revising what he had once 
written was evidently sanctioned by his literary creed. Near 
the end of his life he recalled how he had submitted one of his 
earliest poems to the criticism of several acquaintances, with 
the consequence that after he had adopted their suggestions, 
hardly a line remained unaltered, and yet the changes failed 
to satisfy the critics. ^ He said : " This unexpected result, after 
about a fortnight's anxiety, led me to adopt a rule from which 
I have seldom departed during more than thirty years of lit- 
erary life. When a friend whose judgment I respect has decided 
and upon good advisement told me that a manuscript was worth 
nothing, or at least possessed no redeeming qualities sufficient 
to atone for its defects, I have generally cast it aside; but I 
am little in the custom of paying attention to minute criticisms 

^Lockhart, Vol. IV, pp. 2 and 391. ^ Ibid., Vol. I, p. loi. 
^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 72. *Ibid., Vol. I, p. 113. 

5 Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad. 



116 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

or of offering such to any friend who may do me the honour to 
consult me. I am convinced that, in general, in removing even 
errors of a trivial or venial kind, the character of originality 
is lost, which, upon the whole, may be that which is most val- 
uable in the production." This position appears doubly sig- 
nificant when we remember that it was assumed by a man who 
had only the slightest possible amount of paternal jealousy in 
regard to his writings.^ 

Scott did not always adhere to this resolution, for he did 
accept criticism and make alterations, more in compliance with 
the wishes of James Ballantyne, his friend and printer, than to 
meet the desires of anyone else. He considered that Ballantyne 
represented the ordinary popular taste, and he was ready to 
make some sacrifice of his own judgment in order to satisfy 
his public. He sent the conclusion of Rokeby to Ballantyne 
with this note : " Dear James, — I send you this out of deference 
to opinions so strongly expressed, but still retaining my own, 
that it spoils one effect without producing another." 

When one of his books was adversely criticised by the public 
he received the judgment with open mind, and often analyzed 
it with much acuteness. The introduction to The Monastery 
is a good example of frank, though not servile, submission to 
the decree of public opinion. That he was deeply impressed 
with his blunder in managing the White Lady of Avenel may 
be surmised from the fact that in several later discussions of 
the effect of supernatural apparitions in novels, he emphasized 
the necessity of keeping them sufficiently infrequent to pre- 
serve an atmosphere of mystery. Of The Monastery he said: 
" I agree with the public in thinking the work not very inter- 
esting; but it was written with as much care as the others — 

^ A friend of Scott's once wrote to him, " You are the only author I 
ever yet knew to whom one might speak plain about the faults found with 
his works." (Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 282.) He took great pains, con- 
trary to his usual custom, in revising and correcting the Malachi Mala- 
growther papers, but these were argumentative and in an altogether dif- 
ferent class from his poems and novels ; and besides he felt a special 
responsibility in writing upon a public matter " far more important than 
anything referring to [his] fame or fortune alone." {Lockhart, Vol. IV, 
p. 460.) 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 117 

that is, with no care at all."^ But sometimes he felt incHned 
to rebel against a popular verdict, as when Noma, in The 
Pirate, was said to be a mere copy of Meg Merrilies.^ 

In his later days he grew more and more unsure of himself, 
as he felt compelled to work at his topmost speed. His Jour- 
nal for 1829 has the following record in regard to a review 
he was writing : " I began to warm in my gear, and am 
about to awake the whole controversy of Goth and Celt. I 
wish I may not make some careless blunders."^ The criticisms 
of " J. B." became more frequent and more irritating to him 
as he felt a growing inability to achieve precision in details.'* 
When Lockhart pointed out some lapses in his style, he wrote 
in his Journal, " Well ! I will try to remember all this, but after 
all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, 
and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in 
speaking, is indifferent to me."^ Until he felt his powers fail- 
ing, he was for the most part at once good-natured and inde- 
pendent in his manner of receiving criticism. Whether or not 
he agreed with the opinion expressed, he usually thought that 
what he had once written might best stand, though he might 
be influenced in later work by the advice that had been given. ^ 

" I am sensible that if there be anything good about my 
poetry or prose either," Scott wrote, in a passage that has often 
been quoted, " it is a hurried frankness of composition which 
pleases soldiers, sailors and young people of bold and active 
disposition."^ I have tried to show that this quality was one 
which he not only enjoyed, in his own work and in that of other 
writers, but that as a critic he very seriously approved of it. 

Yet in spite of his belief that the greatest literature is not 
the result of slow and painful labor, it was probably the ease 
with which he wrote which led him to undervalue his own 
work. However we may account for it, he found difficulty in 

^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 379- 2 introduction to the Pirate. 

'^Journal, Vol. II, p. 250. 

*This was, of course, an effect of overwork and disease. Irving quotes 
Scott as saying: "It is all nonsense to tell a man that his mind is not 
affected, when his body is in this state." (Irving's Life, Vol. II, p. 459-) 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 181. "See Lockhart, Vol. II, pp. 265-6. 

''Journal, Vol. I, pp. 212-13; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 13- 



118 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

regarding himself as a great author.^ When this modesty of 
his came into conflict with the other opinion that he had always 
been inclined to hold — that the popularity of books is a test 
of their merit — the result is amusing. He was impelled at 
times to utter contemptuous words about the foolishness of the 
public, and of course he could not help being moved also in 
the other direction — to believe there was more in his writings 
than he had realized. In one mood he said, " I thank God I 
can write ill enough for the present taste ";^ and " I have very 
little respect for that dear publicum whom I am doomed to 
amuse, like Goody Trash in Bartholomew Fair, with rattles 
and gingerbread ; and I should deal very uncandidly with those 
who may read my confessions were I to say I knew a public 
worth caring for, or capable of distinguishing the nicer beauties 
of composition. They weigh good and evil qualities by the 
pound. Get a good name and you may write trash. Get a 
bad one and you may write like Homer, without pleasing a 
single reader."^ Looking back from the end of his career to 
the time when The Lady of the Lake was in the height of its 
success, he wrote : " It must not be supposed that I was either 
so ungrateful or so superabundantly candid as to despise or 
scorn the value of those whose voice had elevated me so much 

^ See Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 309; Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 216; Vol. 
IV, pp. 128 and 498; Vol. V, pp. 128, 412, 448. 

^ Correspondence of C. K. Sharpe, Vol. I, p. 352. 

^Journal, Vol. II, p. 276. In the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1808 
(published 1810) is an article on the Living Poets of Great Britain, which 
if not written by Scott was evidently influenced by him. Speaking of 
Southey, Campbell and Scott, the writer says : " Were we set to classify 
their respective admirers we should be apt to say that those who feel 
poetry most enthusiastically prefer Southey ; those who try it by the most 
severe rules admire Campbell ; while the general mass of readers prefer 
to either the Border Poet. In this arrangement we should do Mr. Scott 
no injustice, because we assign to him in the number of suffrages what we 
deny him in their value." He once wrote to Miss Baillie, " No one can 
both eat his cake and have his cake, and I have enjoyed too extensive 
popularity in this generation to be entitled to draw long-dated bills upon 
the applause of the next." {Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 173.) But in the 
Introductory Epistle to Nigel he said, " It has often happened that those 
who have been best received in their own time have also continued to be 
acceptable to posterity. I do not think so ill of the present generation 
as to suppose that its present favour necessarily infers future condem- 
nation." 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 119 

higher than my own opinion told me I deserved. I felt, on 
the contrary, the more grateful to the public as receiving that 
from partiality which I could not have claimed from merit; 
and I endeavoured to deserve the partiality by continuing such 
exertions as I was capable of for their amusement."^ The 
perfect respectability of these remarks tempts the reader to set 
over against them this earlier observation by the same writer 
in the guise of Chrystal Croftangry, " One thing I have learned 
in life — never to speak sense when nonsense will answer the 
purpose as well."^ 

Whatever Scott might think of the worth of public admira- 
tion, he frankly attempted to write what would be popular. 
He had none of the feeling which has characterized many very 
interesting men of letters, that the desire for self-expression 
is the one motive of the author ; his personal literary impulse, 
on the contrary, was always guided by the thought of the audi- 
ence whom he was addressing. " No one shall find me rowing 
against the stream," says the " Author " in the Introductory 
Epistle to Nigel. " I care not who knows it — I write for gen- 
eral amusement ; and though I will never aim at popularity by 
what I think unworthy means, I will not, on the other hand, 
be pertinacious in the defence of my own errors against the 
voice of the public." Of his last " apoplectic books," he wrote, 
" I am ashamed, for the first time in my life, of the two novels, 
but since the pensive public have taken them, there is no more 
to be said but to eat my pudding and to hold my tongue." ^ 
Early in his career he seems to have felt that he could make 
a good deal of money by writing, if he should wish." Towards 
the end he said, " I know that no literary speculation ever suc- 
ceeded with me but where my own works were concerned ; and 
that, on the other hand, these have rarely failed."^ 

The popularity of his own books was so great that they 
required a special category. He seemed to be incapable of 
ascribing their success to extraordinary excellence, and he set- 
tled down to the opinion that it was simply their novelty that 

1 Introduction to the Lady of the Lake; Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 130. 

2 Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate. 

s Journal, Vol. II, p. 473- * Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 355- 

^Ibid., Vol. V, p. 164. 



120 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

the public cared for. The enthusiastic welcome given him by 
the Irish when he visited Dublin caused him to say in one of 
his letters, " Were it not from the chilling recollection that 
novelty is easily substituted for merit, I should think, like the 
booby in Steele's play,^ that I had been kept back, and that 
there was something more about me than I had ever been led 
to suspect."^ 

He assumed that he had studied popular taste enough to have 
some knowledge of its shiftings, so that he might " set every 
sail towards the breeze."' " I may be mistaken," he once 
wrote, " but I do think the tale of Elspat M'Tavish in my bet- 
termost manner, but J. B. roars for chivalry. He does not 
quite understand that everything may be overdone in this 
world, or sufficiently estimate the necessity of novelty. The 
Highlanders have been off the field now for some time." * His 
comment on Ivanhoe was still more emphatic. " Novelty is 
what this giddy-paced time demands imperiously, and I cer- 
tainly studied as much as I could to get out of the old beaten 
track, leaving those who like to keep the road, which I have 
rutted pretty well."^ 

Believing from the beginning of his career that novelty was 
the chief merit of his work, he was prepared to live up to his 
principles. So it was that when he was " beaten " by Byron 
in metrical romances, he dropped with hardly a regret, so far 
as we can judge, the kind of writing in which he had attained 
such remarkable popularity, and turned to another kind. 
" Since one line has failed, we must just stick to something 
else," he remarked, calmly.^ This was when the small sales 
of The Lord of the Isles as compared with the earlier poems 
warned Scott and his publisher in a very tangible way that the 
field had been captured by Byron. At this time Waverley was 
in the market and Guy Mannering was in process of composi- 
tion. Though it was to his poetry that he chose to give his 

1 See the speech of Humphry Gubbin, in The Tender Husband, Act I, 
Sc. 2. 

^Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 297; see also Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 55. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. II, pp. 104 and 124. 

* Journal, Vol. I, p. 222; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 18. 

^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 350. ^Ibid., Vol. II, p. 508. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 121 

name, Scott had little reason to feel forlorn, as the sale of the 
novels from the very beginning was a pretty effective consola- 
tion for any possible hurt to his vanity. He could have owned 
them as his at any moment, had he chosen to do so. He did 
not read criticisms of his books, but was satisfied, as one of his 
friends observed, " to accept the intense avidity with which his 
novels are read, the enormous and continued sale of his works, 
as a sufficient commendation of them.''^ In the case of Byron, 
as always when the public approved the works of one of his 
brother authors, he considered the popular judgment right. 

Scott did not altogether stop writing poetry, however, as is 
sometimes supposed. The Field of Waterloo and Harold the 
Dauntless were both written after this time ; and the mottoes 
and lyrics in the novels compose a delightful body of verse. 
The fact seems to be that he lost zest for writing long poems, 
partly because of the favor with which Byron's poems were 
received, and his own consequent feeling of inferiority in 
poetic composition; partly because of his discovery of the 
greater ease with which he could write prose, and the greater 
scope it gave him. The more ambitious attempts among the 
poems which he wrote after 1814 are comparative failures. 
But the poetry in his nature prevented him from entirely giv- 
ing over the composition of verse, and he found real delight 
in the occasional writing of short pieces that required no con- 
tinued effort. They were usually made to be used in the nov- 
els, for after the publication of Guy Mannering novel-writing 
became specifically Scott's occupation.^ 

^Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 229. 

''When Constable was proposing to publish the poetry of the novels 
separately, Scott wrote to him that it was beyond his own power to 
distinguish what was original from what was borrowed, and suggested the 
following Advertisement for the book : 

" We believe by far the greater part of the poetry interspersed through 
these novels to be original compositions by the author. At the same time 
the reader will find passages which are quoted from other authors, and 
may probably debit more of these than our more limited reading has enabled 
us to ascertain. Indeed, it is our opinion that some of the following poetry 
is neither entirely original nor altogether borrowed, but consists in some 
instances of passages from other authors, which the author has not hesi- 
tated to alter considerably, either to supply defects of his own memory, 
or to adapt the quotation more explicitly and aptly to the matter in hand." 
{Constable's Correspondence, Vol. Ill, pp. 222-3.) 



122 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

The price of his success in any direction was that he was 
unable to keep his field to himself. Having set a fashion, he 
was more than once annoyed by the crowd who wrote in his 
style and made him feel the necessity of striking out a new 
line.^ It was comparatively easy for the vigorous man who 
wrote Waverley, but in the end, when through his losses he 
was more than ever obliged to hit the popular taste, to feel 
that he must find a new style seemed a hard fate. Yet he 
meant to be beforehand in the race. This is the record in his 
Journal: " Hard pressed as I am by these imitators, who must 
put the thing out of fashion at last, I consider, like a fox at 
his last shifts, whether there be a way to dodge them — some 
new device to throw them ofif, and have a mile or two of free 
ground while I have legs and wind left to use it. There is 
one way to give novelty : to depend for success on the interest 
of a well-contrived story. But woe's me ! that requires 
thought, consideration — the writing out a regular plan or plot 
— above all, the adhering to one — which I never can do, for 
the ideas rise as I write, and bear such a disproportioned ex- 
tent to that which each occupied at the first concoction, that 
(cocksnowns !) I shall never be able to take the trouble; and 
yet to make the world stare, and gain a new march ahead of 
them all ! Well, something we still will do."^ 

By an easy extension of his principle, he came to believe that 
novelty would always succeed for a time. The opinion is ex- 
pressed often in his reviews, and in his journal and letters is 
applied to his own work. So it was that when any one of his 
books seemed partially to fail with the public, his immediate 
impulse was to look for something new to be done.^ One of 
his schemes was a work on popular superstitions, projected 
when Quentin Durward seemed to be falling flat; but the suc- 
cess of the novel made the immediate execution of the plan 
unnecessary.* 

^ " I have taught nearly a hundred gentlemen to fence very nearly, if 
not altogether, as well as myself," he said. {Journal, Vol. I, p. 167. See 
also pp. 273-5.) 

^Journal, Vol. I, pp. 275-6; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 45. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. IV, pp. 322 and 492; Vol. V, p. 186. 

*Ibid., Vol. IV, p. no. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 123 

It was largely his desire to secure variety that encouraged 
him to undertake historical writing. He had also a theory 
about how history should be written, and so he felt that the 
novelty would consist in something more than the fact that the 
Author of Waverley had taken a new line. He wished, as 
Thackeray did later when he proposed to write a history of the 
Age of Queen Anne, to use in an avowedly serious book the 
material with which he had stored his imagination ; and he 
believed he could present it with a vivacity that was not charac- 
teristic of professional historians. The success of the first 
series of Tales of a Grandfather served to confirm the opinion 
he had expressed about them, — " I care not who knows it, I 
think well of them. Nay, I will hash history with anybody, 
be he who he will."^ 

Scott had a very just sense of the value of his great stores 
of information. He did say that he would give one half his 
knowledge if so he might put the other half upon a well-built 
foundation,- but as years went on he learned to use with ease 
the accumulations of knowledge which in his youth had proved 
often unwieldy; and more than once he congratulated himself 
that he beat his imitators by possessing historical and anti- 
quarian lore which they could only acquire by " reading up."^ 
Though he testified that in the beginning of his first novel he 
described his own education, he could hardly apply to himself 
what is there said of Waverley, that, " While he was thus per- 
mitted to read only for the gratification of his amusement, he 
foresaw not that he was losing forever the opportunity of 
acquiring habits of firm and assiduous application, of gaining 
the art of controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers 
of his mind for earnest investigation."* It was otherwise with 
Scott himself. The result of the wide and desultory reading 
of his youth, acting upon a remarkably strong memory, was to 
put him into the position, as he says, of " an ignorant gamester, 
who kept a good hand until he knew how to play it."^ So it 
was that he said of those who followed his lead in writing his- 

^ Journal, Vol. II, p. io6, and Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 162. 
^Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 33-4. ^ Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 259. 

^Waverley, Vol. I, pp. 112-3. See also Mackenzie's Life of Scott, p. 364. 
^Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 29. 



124 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

torical novels, " They may do their fooling with better grace ; 
but I, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it more natural."^ His 
knowledge of history and antiquities was that part of his intel- 
lectual equipment in which he seemed to take most pride. He 
had the highest opinion of the value of historical study for 
ripening men's judgment of current affairs,^ and indeed there 
were few relations of life in which an acquaintance with his- 
tory did not seem to him indispensable. 

But he felt that historical writing had not been adapted " to 
the demands of the increased circles among which literature 
does already find its way."^ Accordingly he resolved to use 
in the service of history that " knack . . . for selecting the 
striking and interesting points out of dull details," which he 
felt was his endowment.* The original introduction to the 
Tales of the Crusaders has the following burlesque announce- 
ment of his intention, in the words of the Eidolon Chairman : 
" I intend to write the most wonderful book which the world 
ever read — a book in which every incident shall be incredible, 
yet strictly true — a work recalling recollections with which the 
ears of this generation once tingled, and which shall be read 
by our children with an admiration approaching to incredulity. 
Such shall be the Life of Napoleon, by the Author of Waver- 
ley." He wished to controvert " the vulgar opinion that the 
flattest and dullest mode of detailing events must uniformly 
be that which approaches nearest to the truth."^ There is no 
doubt that his histories are readable, yet we feel that Southey 
was right in his comment on the Life of Napoleon, — " It was 
not possible that Sir Walter could keep up as a historian the 
character which he had obtained as a novelist ; and in the first 
announcement of this ' Life ' he had, not very wisely, promised 
something as stimulating as his novels. Alas ! he forgot that 
there could be no stimulus of curiosity in it."^ A recent critic 
has said, " Scott lost half his power of vitalizing the past when 

^Journal, Vol. I, pp. 274-5 ; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 44. See also his review 
of Godwin's Life of Chaucer. 

^Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 103. ^Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 260. 

^Journal, Vol. II, p. 96. 

5 Review of Tytler's History of Scotland, Quarterly, November, 1829. 
^ Southey' s Letters, Vol. IV, p. 62. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 125 

he sat down formally to record it — when he turned from his 
marvellous recreation of James I. to give a laboured but very- 
ordinary portrait of Napoleon."^ His partial failure in this 
instance may have been due to an unfortunate choice of sub- 
ject. Only a few years before he wrote the book Scott had 
been thinking- of Napoleon as a " tyrannical monster,"^ a 
" singular emanation of the Evil Principle,"^ " the arch-enemy 
of mankind,"* — phrases which, in spite of their vividness, 
hardly seem to promise a life-like portrayal of the man.^ 

In one notable respect, Scott's conception of how history 
should be written was very modern : he would depict the life 
of the people, not simply the actions of kings and statesmen. 
His historical novels, said Carlyle, " taught all men this truth, 
which looks like a truism, and yet was as good as unknown to 
writers of history and others, till so taught : that the bygone 
ages of the world were actually filled by living men, not by 
protocols, state-papers, controversies, and abstractions of men."® 
One who has the academic notion that a novel, to be great, 
must be written with no ulterior purpose, is almost startled to 
observe how definitely Scott considered it the function of his 
novels to portray ancient manners. Speaking of old romances 
as a source which we may use for studying about our ancestors, 
he said : " From the romance, we learn what they were ; from the 
history, what they did : and were we to be deprived of one of 
these two kinds of information, it might well be made a ques- 
tion, which is most useful or interesting."' He wished to make 
his own romances serve much the same purpose as those writ- 
ten in the midst of the customs which they unconsciously re- 
flected. Of Waverley he said, " It may really boast to be a 
tolerably faithful portrait of Scottish manners."* He inter- 
rupts the story of The Pirate to describe the charm of the 

^ Herford's Age of Wordsworth, pp. 39-40. 

^Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 60. ^Paul's Letters, Letter XVI. 

^Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 320. 

^ On Goethe's favorable opinion of the Napoleon, see a letter given in 
the appendix to Scott's Journal (Vol. II, pp. 485-6 and note). 

^ Carlyle's Essay on Scott. See also Taine's History of English Litera- 
ture, Introduction, I. 

'Review of Metrical Romances, Edinburgh Review, January, 1806. 

^Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 333. 



126 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

leaden heart, and offers this excuse : " As this simple and orig- 
inal remedy is peculiar to the isles of Thule, it were unpardon- 
able not to preserve it at length, in a narrative connected with 
Scottish antiquities."^ His comment on Ivanhoe was as fol- 
lows : " I am convinced that however I myself may fail in the 
ensuing attempt, yet, with more labour in collecting, or more 
skill in using, the materials within his reach, illustrated as the^ 
have been by the labours of Dr. Henry, of the late Mr. Strutt, 
and above all, of Mr. Sharon Turner, an abler hand would have 
been successful."^ 

Scott's early reading was only the basis for the research that 
he undertook afterwards. ^ Much of this later study was accom- 
plished when he was engaged upon such books as Somer/ 
Tracts, Dryden's and Szviffs Works, and the other historical 
publications that make the bibliography of Scott so surprising 
to the ordinary reader; but some of his investigations were 
undertaken specifically for the novels. The Literary Corre- 
spondence of his publisher, Archibald Constable, contains many 
evidences of Scott's efforts, assisted often by Constable, to get 
antiquarian and topographical details correct in the novels. In 
1 82 1 Constable suggested that Sir Walter write a story of the 
time of James I. of England, and was told, " If you can suggest 
anything about the period I will be happy to hear from you; 
you are always happy in your hints. "^ Some years earlier the 
author and the publisher had a correspondence concerning a 
series of letters on the history of Scotland which the former 
was planning to write, and which he wished to publish anony- 
mously for the following reason : " I have not the least doubt 
that I will make a popular book, for I trust it will be both inter- 
esting and useful ; but I never intended to engage in any proper 
historical labour, for which I have neither time, talent, nor 

^The Pirate, Vol. II, p. 138. 

^Introductory Epistle to Ivanhoe. Freeman, in his Norman Conquest, 
vigorously attacks Ivanhoe for its unwarranted picture of the relations 
between Saxons and Normans in the thirteenth century. (Vol. V, pp. 551- 
561.) 

^ Mr. Lang points out that he made many written notes of his reading, 
as we should hardly expect a man of his unrivalled memory to do. (Life 
of Scott, p. 27.) 

* Constable's Correspondence, Vol. Ill, p. 161. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 127 

inclination. ... In truth it would take ten years of any man's 
life to write such a History of Scotland as he should put his 
name to."^ He called his Napoleon " the most severe and 
laborious undertaking which choice or accident ever placed on 
my shoulders."^ 

More than once Scott expresses the opinion that though 
novels may be useful to arouse curiosity about history, and to 
impart some knowledge to people who will not do any serious 
thinking, they may, on the other hand, work harm by satisfy- 
ing with their superficial information those who would other- 
wise read history.^ It seems as if he designed the Life of 
Napoleon and the History of Scotland for a new reading class 
that the novels had been creating, and as if he wished to make 
the step of transition not too long. We can almost fancy them 
as a series of graded books arranged to lead the people of 
Great Britain up to a sufficient height of historical information. 
The Tales of a Grandfather were intended for the beginners 
who had never been infected by the common heresy concerning 
the dulness of history, and who were blessed with sufficiently 
active imagination to make the sugar-coating of fiction 
superfluous.* 

^ Constable's Correspondence, Vol. Ill, pp. 93-4- 

^Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, p. 247. 

3 Mr. Lang's theory that Scott was responsible for a decline in serious 
reading cannot be either proved or refuted completely, but more than one 
man has given personal testimony concerning the stimulating effect of the 
Waverley novels. Thierry's Norman Conquest was directly inspired by 
Ivanhoe, and with Ivanhoe is condemned by Freeman for its mistaken 
views. Mr. Andrew D. White says in his Autobiography that Quentin 
Durzvard and Anne of Geierstein led him to see the first that he had ever 
clearly discerned of the great principles that " lie hidden beneath the sur- 
face of events " — " the secret of the centralization of power in Europe, 
and of the triumph of monarchy over feudalism." (Vol. I. pp. 15-16.) 

* Scott had theories as to what children's books ought to be. They 
should stir the imagination, he said, instead of simply imparting knowledge 
as certain scientific books attempted to do. {Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 27.) 
But he seriously objected to any attempt to write down to the understand- 
ing of children. Of the Tales of a Grandfather he said: "I will make, if 
possible, a book that a child shall understand, yet a man will feel some, 
temptation to peruse, should he chance to take it up." {Lockhart, Vol. 
V, p. 112. See also ib.. Vol. I, p. 19.) Anatole France has expressed ideas 
about children's books which are practically the same as those of Scott. 
(See Le Livre de Mon Ami, 3™^ partie : "A Madame D * * * .") 



128 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

But great as was the interest that Scott took in the historical 
aspect of his work, his artistic sense guided his use of materials, 
and he was well aware of the danger of over-working the mine. 
The principles on which he chose periods and events to repre- 
sent are illustrated in many of the introductions. Of The For- 
tunes of Nigel he said : " The reign of James I., in which 
George Heriot flourished, gave unbounded scope to invention 
in the fable, while at the same time it afforded greater variety 
and discrimination of character than could, with historical con- 
sistency, have been introduced if the scene had been laid a cen- 
tury earlier."^ 

His first published attempt at fiction-writing was a conclu- 
sion to the novel, Queenhoo-Hall,^ of which his opinion was 
that it would never be popular because antiquarian knowledge 
was displayed in it too liberally. " The author," he says, 
" forgot , . . that extensive neutral ground, the large propor- 
tion, that is, of manners and sentiments which are common to 
us and to our ancestors, having been handed down unaltered 
from them to us, or which, arising out of the principles of our 
common nature, must have existed in either state of society."' 
Scott's practice in regard to the language of his historical 
novels was based on much the same theory. He intended to 
admit " no word or turn of phraseology betraying an origin 
directly modern,"^ but to avoid obsolete words for the most 
part; and he never attempted to follow with fidelity the style 
of the exact age of which he was writing. The translation of 
Froissart by Lord Berners seemed to him a sufficiently good 
model to serve for the whole mediaeval period.^ In his review 
of Tales of My Landlord he says of the proem to his book : " It 
is written in the quaint style of that prefixed by Gay to his 
Pastorals, being, as Johnson terms it, ' such imitation as he 

1 Introduction to The Fortunes of Nigel. 

^ See the Introduction to Waverley. 

^ Introductory Epistle to Ivanhoe. 

*Ibid. In Old Mortality, Claverhouse was made to use the phrase "sen- 
timental speeches," but when Lady Louisa Stuart pointed out to Scott that 
the word " sentimental " was modern, he struck it out of the second edition, 

^Introductory Epistle to Ivanhoe. For other references to the use of 
a moderately antique diction see the essays on Walpole and Clara Reeve 
in Lives of the Novelists, and the review of Southey's Amadis de Gaul, 
Edinburgh Review, October, 1803. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 129 

could obtain of obsolete language, and by consequence, in a 
style that was never written or spoken in any age or place,' " 

His Journal contains observations on several historical novels 
which were of little consequence, as, for example, on one by a 
Mr, Bell, — " He goes not the way to write it ; he is too general, 
and not sufficiently minute";^ and on The Spae-Wife, by 
Gait, — " He has made his story difficult to understand, by 
adopting a region of history little known,"- On the other 
hand he remarked, when someone had suggested a number of 
historical subjects to him, — " People will not consider that a 
thing may already be so well told in history, that romance 
ought not in prudence to meddle with it " f and at another time 
he spoke of " the usual habit of antiquarians," to " neglect what 
is useful for things that are merely curious."* 

Aside from the familiar knowledge of ancient manners which 
he thought enabled him to give his tales the necessary touch of 
novelty, and from the "hurried frankness," or spontaneity of 
style which endowed them with vitality, Scott believed that his 
talents included a special knack at description. He felt, how- 
ever, that a sense of the picturesque in action was a different 
thing from a similar perception in regard to scenery, and that 
though the first was natural to him, he was obliged to use 
effort to develop the second,^ Some study of drawing in 
his youth helped him to comprehend the demands of per- 
spective, and he endeavored to carry out the principle of de- 
scribing a scene in the way in which it would naturally strike 
the spectator, neither overloading with confused detail nor 
over-emphasizing what should be subordinate,^ That his plan 
was consciously adopted may be seen from his discussion of 
Byron's skill in description and from his comments on the 
descriptive passages of the mediaeval romances,"^ 

'^Journal, Vol. II, p. 226. ^ Ibid., Vol. II, p. 216. 

^Ibid., Vol. II, p. 319. *Ibid., Vol. I, p. 22^. 

^ Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 40. 

^ Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate. See also Letters to Heber, 
pp. 128-32, and 154; and Ruskin's analysis of Scott's descriptions: Modern 
Painters, Part IV, ch. 16, % 23 ff. 

' See particularly his reviews of Childe Harold, Canto III, Quarterly, 
October, 1816 ; and of Southey's translation of the Amadis de Gaul, Edin- 
burgh Review, October, 1803. 



130 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

At the same time he understood the advantages of the real- 
istic method. On one occasion he stated as his creed, "that 
in nature herself no two scenes were exactly alike, and that 
whoever copied truly what was before his eyes would possess 
the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an 
imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes 
he recorded; whereas, whoever trusted to imagination would 
soon find his own mind circumscribed and contracted to a few 
favourite images, and the repetition of these would sooner or 
later produce that very monotony and barrenness which had 
always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the 
patient worshippers of truth."^ Wordsworth disapproved of 
Scott's method in description. He is quoted as having said: 
" Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her 
charms ! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home 
[and] fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent attention on 
all that surrounded him."^ Somewhat like a rejoinder sounds 
another remark of Scott's, in phrases that Wordsworth would 
have detested. Scott said cheerfully, " As to the actual study 
of nature, if you mean the landscape gardening of poetry. . . . 
I can get on quite as well from recollection, while sitting in the 
Parliament house, as if wandering through wood and wold."^ 
At another time he said, " If a man will paint from nature, he 
will be likely to amuse those who are daily looking at it."* 

Though Scott prided himself somewhat on his descriptive 
powers he realized that he could not do his best work on minute 
canvases. We have already seen how he contrasted himself 
with Jane Austen. " The exquisite touch," he said, " which 
renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interest- 
ing from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is 
denied to me."* 

Of Scott's opinion in regard to the ethical effect of novels, I 

^ Lockhart, Vol. II, pp. 232-3. 

^Quoted in Wordsworth (English Men of Letters) by F. W. H. Myers, 
P- 143- 

^ Recollections of Scott, by R. P. Gillies. Fraser's, xii : 254. 

^Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 62. 

^Journal, Vol. I, p. 155, and Vol. II, p. 37; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 476, 
and Vol. V, p. 380. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 131 

have already spoken.^ The fact that he refused to use the con- 
ventional plea of a desire to improve public morals, and that 
he understood how little a reader is really influenced by the 
exalted sentiments of heroes of fiction, gave Carlyle a fit of 
righteous indignation f but it is futile to say that Scott " had 
no message to deliver to the world." He might have retorted, 
in the words which he once used about Homer, — " Doubtless 
an admirable moral may be often extracted from his poem ; 
because it contains an accurate picture of human nature, which 
can never be truly presented without conveying a lesson of in- 
struction. But it may shrewdly be suspected that the moral 
was as little intended by the author as it would have been the 
object of an historian, whose work is equally pregnant with 
morality, though a detail of facts be only intended."^ It was 
a comfort to Scott at the end of his life to reflect that the ten- 
dency of all he had written was morally good,* and we can 
well believe that he was pleased by the enthusiastic tribute of 
his young critic, J. L. Adolphus, who said of his books : " There 
is not an unhandsome action or degrading sentiment recorded 
of any person who is recommended to the full esteem of the 
reader."^ 

That Scott considered poetical power very important for a 
writer of novels, he made evident in his Lives of the Novelists. 
Mr. Herford has said, but surely without good reason, that 
Scott wholly lacked the sense of mystery, and that in this re- 
spect Mrs. Radcliffe was more modern than he.*" Yet it was 
Scott who censured Mrs. Radcliffe for explaining her mysteries. 
He had a vein of superstition in his nature, too, about which he 
might have said, using the words given to a character in one of 
his stories, — " It soothes my imagination, without influencing 
my reason or conduct."^ A liking for the wonderful and ter- 
rible, which he felt from his earliest childhood, was one mani- 
festation of a poetical temperament which is so apparent that 
there is no need of reciting the evidence. The poetical quali- 

^ In the discussion of Lives of the Novelists. 

^See his Essay on Scott. ^Dryden, Vol. XIV, p. 136. 

^Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 415, and Introductory Epistle to Nigel. 

^Letters to Heber, p. 44. 

^Op. cit., p. 120. ''My Aunt Margaret's Mirror. 



132 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

ties in the Waverley novels gave Adolphus one of his favorite 
arguments in the attempt to prove that Scott was the author. 

Yet Scott seemed to feel that his position as a writer of 
popular fiction, however much the novel is capable of being 
the vehicle of imagination and poetical power, was not a really 
high one. James Ballantyne persuaded him to omit from one 
of his introductions a passage that seemed to belittle the occu- 
pation of his life/ but in the introduction to The Abbot he 
wrote : " Though it were worse than affectation to deny that 
my vanity was satisfied at my success in the department in 
which chance had in some measure enlisted me, I was never- 
theless far from thinking that the novelist or romance-writer 
stands high in the ranks of literature." The ideal which he set 
for himself is indicated in the following passage of his article 
on Tales of My Landlord: " If . . . the features of an age gone 
by can be recalled in a spirit of delineation at once faithful and 
striking . . . the composition is in every point of view dig- 
nified and improved ; and the author, leaving the light and friv- 
olous associates with whom a careless observer would be dis- 
posed to ally him, takes his seat on the bench of the historians 
of his time and country." He once expressed the opinion that 
the historical romance approaches, in some measure, when it is 
nobly executed, to the epic in poetry.^ When a medal of Scott, 
engraved from the bust by Chantrey, was struck off, he sug- 
gested the motto which was used : 

" Bardorum citharas patrio qui reddidit Istro," 
and said, " because I am far more vain of having been able to 
fix some share of public attention upon the ancient poetry and 
manners of my country, than of any original efforts which I 
have been able to make in literature."^ The following com- 
mendation, which he wrote for a book of portraits accompanied 
by essays, might be made to apply to his novels :" It is impos- 
sible for me to conceive a work which ought to be more inter- 
esting to the present age than that which exhibits before our 
eyes our ' fathers as they lived ' "* He felt strongly the value 

^Journal, Vol. II, p. 8. 

'^Review of Hoffmann's Novels, Foreign Quarterly Review, July, 1827. 

^Letters to R. Polwhele, etc., p. 102. 

* Lodge's Illustrious Personages, Preface. 



HIS CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK 133 

and importance of past manners, faiths and ideals for the pres- 
ent, and from this point of view took satisfaction in the social 
and ethical teaching of his novels. 

On the whole, Scott's opinions about his own work fitted well 
with his general literary principles, except that his modesty 
inclined him to discount his own performance while he over- 
estimated that of others. With this qualification we may re- 
member that he always spoke sensibly about his work, without 
affectation, and with abundant geniality. We are reminded of 
the comment on Moliere quoted by Scott from a French 
writer, — " He had the good fortune to escape the most dan- 
gerous fault of an author writing upon his own compositions, 
and to exhibit wit, where some people would only have shown 
vanity and self-conceit."^ 

^Article on Moliere, Foreign Quarterly Review , February, 1828. 



CHAPTER VI 

Scott's Position as Critic 

Comparison of Scott with Jeffrey and with the Romantic critics— 
His criticism largely appreciative— Romantic in special cases and Au- 
gustan in attitude— Comparison with Coleridge— Scott's respect for the 
verdict of the public— His opinion that elucidation is the function of 
criticism— Use of historical illustration— Hesitation about analysing 
poetry— Political criticism— Verdict of his contemporaries on his criti- 
cism—Influence as a critic— Literary prophecies— Character of his criti- 
cal work as a whole— His attitude towards it— Lack of system— Broad 
fields he covered— His greatness a reason for the importance of his 
criticism. 

Important as Scott's poetry was in the English Romantic 
revival, as a critic he can hardly be counted among the Roman- 
ticists. His attitude, nevertheless, differed radically from that 
of the school represented by Jeffrey and Gifford. We have 
already seen that he disliked their manner of reviewing, and 
that he was conscious of complete disagreement with Jeffrey 
in regard to poetic ideals. Of Jeffrey Mr. Gates has said : 
" [He] rarely appreciates a piece of literature. . . . He is 
always for or against his author ; he is always making points."^ 
That Scott was influenced in his early critical work by the tone 
of the Edinburgh Review is undeniable, but temperamentally 
he was inclined to give any writer a fair chance to stir his emo- 
tions ; and he did not adopt the magisterial mood that dictated 
the famous remark, " This will never do." Scott's style lacked 
the adroitness and pungency which helped Jeffrey successfully 
to take the attitude of the censor, and which made his satire 
triumphant among his contemporaries. Scott declined, more- 
over, to cultivate skill in a method which he considered unfair. 
Compared with Jeffrey's his criticism wanted incisiveness, but 
it wears better. 

The period was transitional, and Jeffrey did not go so far 
as Scott in breaking away from the dictation of his predeces- 
sors. But his attitude was on the whole more modern than 

^ Three Studies in Literature, p. 12. 

134 



HIS POSITION AS CRITIC 135 

the reader would infer from the following sentence in one of his 
earliest reviews : " Poetry has this much at least in common with 
religion, that its standards were fixed long ago by certain inspired 
writers, whose authority it is no longer lawful to call in" ques- 
tion."^ He considered himself rather an interpreter of public 
opinion than a judge defining ancient legislation, but he used 
the opinion of himself and like-minded men as an unimpeach- 
able test of what the greater public ought to believe in regard 
to literature. We may remember that the enthusiasm over the 
Elizabethan dramatists which seems a special property of Lamb 
and Hazlitt, and which Scott shared, was characteristic also of 
Jejffrey himself. It was Jeffrey's dogmatism and his repug- 
nance to certain fundamental ideas which were to become 
dominant in the poetry of the nineteenth century that lead us 
to consider him one of the last representatives of the eighteenth 
century critical tradition. Scott praised the Augustan writers 
as warmly as Jeffrey did, but he was more hospitable to the 
newer literary impulse. " Perhaps the most damaging accusa- 
tion that can be made against Jeffrey as a critic," says Mr. 
Gates, " is inability to read and interpret the age in which he 
lived."2 

Scott's criticism was largely appreciative, but appreciative 
on a somewhat different plane from that of the contemporary 
critics whom we are accustomed to place in a more modern 
school: Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb, and Coleridge. His judgments 
were less delicate and subtle than the judgments of these men 
were apt to be, and more " reasonable " in the eighteenth- 
century sense ; they were marked, however, by a regard for the 
imagination that would have seemed most unreasonable to 
many men of the eighteenth century. 

Scott had not a fixed theory of literature which could domi- 
nate his mind when he approached any work. He was open- 
minded, and in spite of his extreme fondness for the poetry 
of Dr. Johnson he was apt to be on the Romantic side in any 
specific critical utterance. We have seen also that he resem- 
bled the Romanticists in his power to disengage his verdicts 

^Edinburgh Review, No. i, October, 1802: review of Thalaba. 
2 Three Studies in Literature, p. 38. 



136 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

on literature from ethical considerations. On the other hand 
he seems always to have deferred to the standard authorities 
of the classical criticism of his time when his own knowledge 
was not sufficient to guide him. In discussing Roscommon's 
Essay on Translated Verse he wrote : " It must be remembered 
that the rules of criticism, now so well known as to be even 
trite and hackneyed, were then almost new to the literary 
world."^ 

Perhaps the main reason why one would not class Scott's 
critical work with that of the Romanticists is that he had no 
desire to proclaim a new era in creative literature or in criti- 
cism. Like the Romanticists he was ready to substitute " for 
the absolute method of judging by reference to an external 
standard of ' taste,' a method at once imaginative and histori- 
cal " f yet he talked less about imagination than about good 
sense. The comparison with Boileau suggests itself, for Scott 
admired that critic in the conventional fashion, calling him " a 
supereminent authority,"^ and Boileau also had said much about 
" reason and good sense." But Scott had an appreciation of 
the furor poeticus that made " good sense " quite a different 
thing to him from what it was to Boileau. He did not say, 
moreover, that the poet should be supremely characterized by 
good sense, but that the critic, recognizing the facts about 
human emotion, should make use of that quality. 

The subjective process by which experience is transmuted 
into literature engaged Scott's attention very little: in this re- 
spect also he stands apart from the newer school of critics. 
The metaphysical description of imagination or fancy inter- 
ested him less than the piece of literature in which these quali- 
ties were exhibited. His own mental activities were more 
easily set in motion than analysed, and the introspective or 
philosophical attitude of mind was unnatural to him. Because 
of his adoption of the historical method of studying literature, 
and the similarity of many of his judgments to those which 
were in general characteristic of the Romantic school, we may 
say that Scott's criticism looks forward ; but it shows the influ- 

'^ Dry den, Vol. XI, p. 26. 

^Herford, op. cit., pp. 51-2. ^ Essay on the Drama. 



HIS POSITION AS CRITIC 137 

ence of the earlier period in its acceptance of traditional judg- 
ments based on external standards which disregarded the nature 
of the creative process. 

From Coleridge Scott is separated in the most definite way, 
Coleridge began at the foundation, building up a set of princi- 
ples such as the new impulse in literature seemed to demand. 
Scott preferred the concrete, and was stimulated by the particu- 
lar book to express opinions that would never have come to 
his mind as the result of pursuing a train of unembodied ideas. 
Coleridge's judgments, moreover, would be unaffected by pub- 
lic estimation, for he sought to found them on the spiritual and 
philosophic consciousness that exists apart from the crowd.^ 
Scott, on the other hand, was ready to use popular judgment 
as an important test of his opinions. Coleridge himself pointed 
out another interesting contrast. He wrote : " Dear Sir Wal- 
ter Scott and myself were exact, but harmonious opposites in 
this ; — that every old ruin, hill, river, or tree, called up in his 
mind a host of historical or biographical associations, . . . 
whereas, for myself, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson, I believe I 
should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more 
interest in it than in any other plain of similar features."- We 
might perhaps say that Coleridge's affection was given to ideas, 
Scott's, to objects ; hence Coleridge was a critic of literary prin- 
ciples and theories, Scott a critic of individual books and writ- 
ers. It follows that Scott was on the whole an impressionistic 
critic. A study of his personality is essential to a considera- 
tion of his critical work, for he was not so much a systematic 
student of literature, guided by fixed principles, as a man of 
a certain temperament who read particular things and made 
particular remarks about them as he felt inclined. The incon- 
sistencies and contradictions which would naturally result from 
such a procedure are occasionally noticeable, but they are fewer 
than would occur in the work of a less well-balanced man than 
himself. 

His ideas about criticism were influenced by his feeling that 
the judgment of the public would after all take its own course, 

' Wylie, Studies in Criticism, pp. 107-8. 

^ Table Talk, August 4, 1833. Works, Vol. VI, p. 472. 



138 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

and that it was in the long run the best criterion. He used his 
opinion that an author, even in his own Hfe-time, commonly 
receives fair treatment from the public, as an argument against 
establishing in England any literary body having the power of 
pensioning literary men.^ On this subject he said, " There 
is . . . really no occasion for encouraging by a society the 
competition of authors. The land is before them, and if they 
really have merit they seldom fail to conquer their share of 
public applause and private profit. ... I cannot, in my knowl- 
edge of letters, recollect more than two men whose merit is 
undeniable while, I am afraid, their circumstances are narrow. 
I mean Coleridge and Maturin." 

Scott's whole attitude toward criticism shows that he felt 
its supreme function to be elucidation. It should also, he be- 
lieved, warn the world against books that were foolish, or 
pernicious, intellectually or morally; but unless there were 
good reason for issuing such warnings the bad books should 
be ignored and the good treated sympathetically, not without 
such discrimination as should distinguish between the better 
and the worse in them, but with emphasis on the better. His 
literary creed, though not formulated into a system, was con- 
scious and fairly definite ; but it consisted of general principles 
which never resolved themselves into intricate subtleties requir- 
ing great space for their development. Scott could not think 
in that way, and he felt convinced that such thinking was use- 
less and worse than useless. A magazine-writer of his own 
period who said of him, — " The author of Waverley, we appre- 
hend, has neither the patience nor the disposition requisite for 
writing philosophically upon any subject,"^ was mistaken, for 
much of Scott's criticism, without making any pretensions, is 
really philosophical. But any fine-drawn analysis seemed to 
him to serve the vanity of the critic rather than the need of 
the public; and he despised that arrogance in the critic which 
leads him to assume to direct literary taste. 

Historical illustration was that kind of editorial work which 
he found most congenial, and which harmonized best with his 

1 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 402. 

^ Article on Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft, Fraser's, December, 
1830. 



HIS POSITION AS CRITIC 139 

critical principles ; for when he could bring definite facts to the 
service of elucidation he felt that he was doing something 
worth while. Among all the introductions and annotations 
that we have from his hand, including those of the Dryden and 
the Szuift, this kind of explanation greatly predominates over 
the more strictly literary comment; in his reviews, also, it is 
evident that he seized every opportunity for turning from lit- 
erary to historical discussion. He was in the habit of " em- 
broidering the subject, whatever it might be, with lively anec- 
dotic illustration,"^ as one of his biographers says. We are 
not to conclude that in writing on specifically literary subjects 
he felt ill at ease. He felt, on the contrary, that the objection 
lay in the too great ease with which the critic might become 
dictatorial. He was fond enough of details when they were 
concrete and vital. The facts of literary history were in this 
category to him, as distinguished from the notions of literary 
theory ; and we find that his critical principles are apt to appear 
incidentally among remarks on what seemed to him the more 
tangible and important facts of literary and social history. 
The books he chose to review were chiefly those which gave 
him a chance to use his historical information and imagination. 
His ideas were concrete, as those of a great novelist must in- 
evitably be. Indeed the dividing line between creative work 
and criticism seems often to be obliterated in Scott's literary 
discussions, since he was inclined to amplify and illustrate in- 
stead of dissecting the book under consideration. As a critic 
he was distinguished by the qualities which appear in his nov- 
els, and which may be described in Hazlitt's words, as "the 
most amazing retentiveness of memory, and vividness of con- 
ception of what would happen, be seen, and felt by everybody 
in given circumstances."^ 

Scott felt that there was especial danger of futile theorizing 
in the criticism of poetry. In writing about Alexander's Feast 
he discussed for a moment the possibility of detecting points 
at which the author had paused in his work, but almost imme- 
diately he stopped himself with the characteristic remark — 

1 Mackenzie's Life of Scott, p. ii8. 

2 The Plain Speaker, Hazlitt's Works, Vol. VII, p. 345- 



140 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

" There may be something fanciful ... in this reasoning, 
which I therefore abandon to the reader's mercy ; only begging 
him to observe, that we have no mode of estimating the exer- 
tions of a quality so capricious as a poetic imagination."^ Early 
in his career he gave this rather over-amiable explanation of 
the fact that he had never undertaken to review poetry : " I 
am sensible there is a greater difference of tastes in that depart- 
ment than in any other, and that there is much excellent poetry 
which I am not nowadays able to read without falling asleep, 
and which would nevertheless have given me great pleasure at 
an earlier period of my life. Now I think there is something 
hard in blaming the poor cook for the fault of our own palate 
or deficiency of appetite."^ We have seen that he did review 
poetry afterwards, but that he was inclined to do it with the 
least possible emphasis on the specifically aesthetic elements. 
On the subject of novel-writing he developed a somewhat 
fuller critical theory, but here also his discussions concerned 
themselves rather with the kind of ideas set forth than with 
the manner of presentation. 

It does indeed seem as if Scott's feelings were more easily 
aroused to the point of formulating " laws " in the field of 
political criticism than in that which appears to us his more 
legitimate sphere. He has his fling, to be sure, at Madame de 
Stael, because she " lived and died in the belief that revolutions 
were to be effected, and countries governed, by a proper suc- 
cession of clever pamphlets."^ But in proposing the establish- 
ment of the Quarterly Revieiv he made no secret of the fact 
that his motives were political. The literary aspect of the 
periodical was thought of as a subordinate, though a necessary 
and not unimportant phase of the undertaking. The Letters 
of Malachi Malagrowther contain some very definite maxims 
on the subject of political economy, and just as decided are the 
remarks made in the last of Paul's Letters, as well as in the 
Life of Napoleon and elsewhere, as to how Louis XVIII. ought 
to set about the task of calming his distracted kingdom of 

^ Dryden, Vol. I, p. 342. See above, pp. 136-7. 
^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 84. 
^Life of Bage, in Novelists' Library. 



HIS POSITION AS CRITIC 141 

France. But however emphatic Scott may be in the comments 
on government which appear throughout his writings, he was 
as strongly averse in this matter as in hterary affairs to any 
separation of philosophy from fact: his maxims are always 
derived from experience. The following statement of opinion 
is typical : '' In legislating for an ancient people, the question 
is not, what is the best possible system of law, but what is the 
best they can bear. Their habitudes and prejudices must al- 
ways be respected; and, whenever it is practicable, those preju- 
dices, instead of being destroyed, ought to be taken as the basis 
of the new regulations."^ 

It was Scott's political creed that roused the ire of such men 
as Hazlitt and Hunt, though they may also have been exas- 
perated at the unprecedented success of poetry which seemed 
so facile and so superficial to them as Scott's, Leigh Hunt 
calls him " a poet of a purely conventional order," " a bitter 
and not very large-minded politician," " a critic more agree- 
able than subtle."^ But Scott's politics may be looked at in 
another way. " In his patriotism," says Mr, Courthope, " his 
passionate love of the past, and his reverence for established 
authority, literary or political, Scott is the best representative 
among English men of letters of Conservatism in its most 
generous form,"^ 

Though it seems to have been a common opinion among the 
literary men of his own time that Scott's criticism was super- 
ficial, his knowledge of mediaeval literature was, as we have 
seen, recognized and respected. Favorable comments by his 
contemporaries on other parts of his critical work are not dif- 
ficult to find. For example, Gifford wrote to Murray in re- 

^ Essay on Judicial Reform, Edinburgh Annual Register, Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 
352. Everyone knows that Scott was a decided Tory, and it is commonly 
supposed that he was an extremely prejudiced partisan. But he closes a 
political passage in Woodstock with these words : " We hasten to quit politi- 
cal reflections, the rather that ours, we believe, will please neither Whig nor 
Tory." (End of Chapter 11.) From the definitions of Whig and Tory 
given in the Tales of a Grandfather, no one could guess his politics. 
(Chapter 53.) 

2 Leigh Hunt's Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 263. See also pp. 258-260, and 
the notes on his Feast of the Poets. 

^ Courthope's Liberal Movement, p. 122. 



142 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

gard to the article on Lady Suffolk's Correspondence: " Scott's 
paper is a clever, sensible thing — the work of a man who 
knows what he is about."^ Isaac D'Israeli made the following 
observation on another of Scott's papers : " The article on 
Pepys, after so many have been written, is the only one which, 
in the most charming manner possible, shows the real value of 
these works, which I can assure you many good scholars have 
no idea of." A more recent verdict may be set beside those 
just quoted, and it is in perfect agreement with them. " His 
critical faculty," says Professor Saintsbury, " if not extraordi- 
narily subtle, was always as sound and shrewd as it was good- 
natured." 

Scott's influence as a critic was not very great, but his crea- 
tive work exerted a strong influence on criticism as well as on 
the whole intellectual life of his age. His own novels demanded 
of the critic that kind of appreciation of the large qualities and 
negligence of the small which he had insisted on considering 
the function of criticism; and they became a fact in literature 
which determined to some degree the attitude taken toward 
ephemeral ideas. Newman notes the popularity of Scott's 
novels as one of the influences which prepared the ground for 
the Tractarian movement, for Scott enriched the visions of 
men by his pictures of the past, gave them noble ideas, and 
created a desire for a greater richness of spiritual life.* Much 
of his criticism also was inspired by the wish to construct an 
adequate picture of the past; so far it worked in the same 
direction with the novels. Its most important offices aside from 
this were perhaps to present large and kindly views of literature 
and literary characters, especially through biographical essays ; 
and to ameliorate somewhat the prevailing asperity of periodical 
criticism. 

^Life of Murray, Vol. II, p. 159. ^Ibid., Vol. II, p. 232. 

3 Macmillan's Magazine, Ixx : 326. 

* Newman's Apologia, pp. 96-97. Mark Twain thinks the influence of 
the novels was pernicious. He says : " A curious exemplification of the 
power of a single book for good or harm is shown in the effects wrought 
by Don Quixote and those wrought by Ivanhoe. The first swept the world's 
admiration for the mediaeval chivalry-silliness out of existence ; and the 
other restored it. . . . Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern 
character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure respon- 
sible for the war." (,Life on the Mississippi, ch. xlvi.) 



HIS POSITION AS CRITIC 148 

A man of Scott's temperament was little likely to set himself 
up for a prophet, and probably no literary prophecies of his 
were in the least influential. Though he sometimes boasted 
that he understood the varying currents of popular taste, his 
experience in the publishing business taught him the fallibility 
of his impressions when the work of writers other than himself 
was concerned. He once wrote, — " The friends who know me 
best, and to whose judgment I am myself in the constant habit 
of trusting, reckon me a very capricious and uncertain judge 
of poetry; and I have had repeated occasion to observe that I 
have often failed in anticipating the reception of poetry from 
the public."^ But it is beyond the strength of flesh and blood 
to resist saying things about the future sometimes, and Scott 
occasionally yielded to the temptation, helped, no doubt, by his 
amiability. Southey's Madoc, however, has not yet assumed 
that place at the feet of Milton which, as we have seen, he 
ventured to predict for it. Yet, if we may trust the memory 
of one of his friends, Scott foresaw the literary success of two 
of his greatest contemporaries, R. P. Gillies said in his Rec- 
ollections: " I remember well how correct Scott's impressions 
were of such beginners in the literary world as had not then 
acquired any fixed character. Of Lord Byron he had from the 
first a favourable impression. ... Of Wordsworth he always 
spoke favourably, insisting that he was a true poet, but pre- 
dicting that it would be long ere his works obtained the praise 
which they merited from the public."^ Scott explicitly prided 
himself on two of his prophecies : that Washington Irving would 
make a name for himself, and that Sir Arthur Wellesley would 
become known as an extraordinary man. 

Though Scott's critical work is comparatively little known, 
and though it presents no solidly organized front by which the 
public may be impressed, the opinions of so notable a writer 
have always had a certain weight. Mr. Churton Collins thinks 
Scott's judgment on Dunbar has led modern editors to indulge 

^Familiar Letters, Vol. I, pp. 216-17. See also his remarks upon book- 
sellers in his review of Pitcairn's Ancient Criminal Trials, Quarterly, 
February, 1831. 

2 Eraser's, xiii : 693. 



144 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

in very exaggerated statements concerning the merit of that 
poet.^ A heavier charge has been laid at Scott's door on the 
score of his edition of the Memoirs of Captain Carleton. He 
concluded on very insufficient evidence, says Colonel Parnell, 
that these memoirs were genuinely historical, published them 
as such, and by the weight of his opinion falsified " the whole 
stream of nineteenth-century history bearing on the reign of 
Queen Anne."- Stanhope, Macaulay, and other historians 
were ready to accept Scott's judgment without further inves- 
tigation, it seems ; and if the accusation be true we may con- 
clude that his influence as a critic has reached farther than 
might at first sight appear. Yet we may be content to follow 
his lead in general, except in those bits of enthusiasm over his 
friends which bear witness to a generously optimistic nature 
rather than to a rigid critical attitude such as we should hardly 
demand in any case from a man of letters commenting on his 
contemporaries and friends. George Ticknor was greatly im- 
pressed by the " right-mindedness " of the young Sophia Scott,^ 
and we may fairly adopt the word to describe the father whom 
she so much resembled. There was in him, as Carlyle said, 
" such a sunny current of true humour and humanity, a free 
joyful sympathy with so many things ; what of fire he had all 
lying so beautifully latent, as radical latent heat, as fruitful 
internal warmth of life ; — a most robust, healthy man !"* 

Writers upon Scott have made much, perhaps too much, of 
his feeling that his position as a landed gentleman was more 
enviable than his prominence as a writer. The point would be 
of greater consequence if it performed so important a function 
in explaining his work as has commonly been assigned to it. 
We are told that he wrote much and hastily because he wanted 
money to establish and support an estate ; but the truth is that 
if he wrote at all he had to write in this way. He justly be- 
lieved that he could do his best work so. Yet it was a natural 
result of his facility that he should look upon the literature he 

^ Essay on Dunbar in Ephemera Critica. 

^ English Histoi-ical Review, vi : 97. 

^Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor, Vol. I, p. 283. 

* Carlyle's Essay on Scott. 



HIS POSITION AS CRITIC 145 

produced as of comparatively little moment. Some of his re- 
marks about his critical work, however, show that he really 
regarded creative writing as the business of his life, and that 
in contrast with it he considered his criticism a relief from more 
arduous labor. After the publication of Marmion he wrote: 
" I have done with poetry for some time — it is a scourging 
crop, and ought not to be hastily repeated. Editing, therefore, 
may be considered as a green crop of turnips or peas, ex- 
tremely useful for those whose circumstances do not admit of 
giving their farm a summer fallow."^ After years of novel- 
writing he said of writing a review, " No one that has not 
laboured as I have done on imaginary topics can judge of the 
comfort afforded by walking on all-fours, and being grave 
and dull."2 

From what Scott said about Dryden as a critic we may con- 
clude that the unsystematic character of his own scholarly 
work may have been a matter of principle as well as inclina- 
tion. " Dryden," he wrote, " forebore, from prudence, indo- 
lence, or a regard for the freedom of Parnassus, to erect him- 
self into a legislator."^ The words remind us of comments 
made upon Scott's own work, as for example by Professor 
Masson, who spoke of " the shrewdness and sagacity of some 
of his critical prefaces to his novels, where he discusses prin- 
ciples of literature without seeming to call them such."^ Scott 
was quick to notice "cant and slang "^ in the professional 
language of men in all arts; and he valued most highly the 
remarks of those whose intelligence had not been overlaid by a 
conventional pedantry. 

Knowing that criticism was not the main business of his 
life, we are inclined to be surprised at the broad fields which 
he seemed to have no hesitation in entering upon. His remark- 
able memory doubtless had something to do with this, but he 
lived in a period when generalization was more possible and 
more permissible than it is in this era of special monographs. 

1 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 9. 

^Journal, Vol. II, p. 259; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 248. 

^ Dryden, Vol. I, conclusion. 

^British Novelists and their Styles, p. 204. 

^Journal, Vol. II, p. 173; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 99. 

10 



146 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

The large tendencies and characteristics that he traced in his 
essay on Romance, for instance, are undoubtedly to be qualified 
at numberless points, but writing when he did, Scott was com- 
paratively untroubled by these limitations. Moreover, he had 
the gift of seeing things broadly, so that in essentials his sur- 
vey remains true. But the amount of his work is almost as 
astonishing as its scope and variety. He could accomplish so 
much only by disregarding details of form ; and that he did so 
we know from our study of his principles of composition, con- 
firmed by the evidence of the passages from him that have here 
been quoted. It is clear, also, that he was not limited by that 
" horror of the obvious," which, as Mr. Saintsbury says, " bad 
taste at all times has taken for a virtue."^ Beyond this we 
have to fall back for explanation on the unusual qualities of 
his mind. An observing friend said of him that, "With a 
degree of patience and quietude which are seldom combined 
with much energy, he could get through an incredible extent 
of literary labour."^ 

Every quality which made Scott a great man contributes to 
the interest and importance of his criticism. Such a body of 
criticism, formulated by a large creative genius, would be of 
special consequence if it served merely as the basis for a study 
of his other work, a commentary on the principles which un- 
derlay his whole literary achievement. But it would be strange 
if a man of Scott's intellectual personality could write criticism 
which was not important in itself, and we can only account 
for the general neglect of this part of his work by considering 
how large a place his poems and novels give him in the history 
of our literature. If he deserves a still larger place, we may 
remember with satisfaction that as a man he was great enough 
to support honorably any distinction won by his mind. 

^History of Criticism, Vol. I, p. 156. 

2 Recollections of Scott by R. P. Gillies, Eraser's, xii : 688. 



APPENDIX I. 

Bibliography 

The bibliography of Scott's writings is given in three parts, 
as follows : 

1. Books which Scott wrote or edited, or to which he was an 

important contributor. The list is chronological. 

2. Contributions to periodicals. 

3. Books which contain letters written by Scott. These 

titles are arranged approximately in the order of their 
importance from the point of view of a study of Scott. 

I. Books zvhich Scott zvrote or edited, or to zvhich he zvas 
an important contributor. 

(In the following list the first editions of the poems and novels 
are noted without bibliographical details. In the case of other 
works the main facts in regard to publication are given ; and an 
attempt is made to indicate the nature of the books named, unless 
they have been discussed in the text.) 

1796 The Chase and William and Helen. (Translated from 
Biirger.) 

1799 Goetz of Berlichingen. (Translated from Goethe.) 
Apology for Tales of Terror. 

Twelve copies were privately printed, to exhibit the work of 
the Ballantyne press at Kelso. The title was occasioned by the 
delay in the publication of Matthew Lewis's Tales of Terror, and 
the little book contains poems which Scott had contributed to that 
work. (The contents are named in the Catalogue of the Centenary 
Exhibtion.) 

1800 The Eve of St. John, a Border ballad. 

1802-3 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; consisting of his- 
torical and romantic ballads, collected in the southern 
counties of Scotland; with a few of modern date 
founded upon local tradition. 

3 vols. Vols. I and 2, Kelso, 1802; vol. 3, Edinburgh, 1803. 
Second edition, 1803. The book was republished frequently 

147 



148 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

before 1830, when it was included in the collected edition 
of Scott's poems. It has also been reprinted independently since 
then several times. The latest and most complete edition is that 
published in 1902, edited by T. F. Henderson. Other books in 
which part of Scott's ballad material was used in such a way as 
to give his name a place on the title-page are named below : 

Kinmont Willie : a Border ballad, with an historical introduction, 
by Sir Walter Scott. (Carlisle Tracts No. 6) Carlisle, 1841. 

A Ballad Book by C. K. Sharpe. MDCCCXXIII. Reprinted 
with notes and ballads from the unpublished manuscripts of C. K. 
Sharpe and Sir Walter Scott . . . edited by ... D. Laing. Edin- 
burgh, 1880. 

1804 Sir Tristrem : a metrical romance of the thirteenth cen- 

tury, by Thomas of Ercildoune, called the Rhymer. 
Edited from the Auchinleck manuscript by Walter 
Scott. Edinburgh. 

Only 12 copies of Sir Tristrem were printed in the form in 
which Scott had intended to publish it, without the expurgation 
which his friends insisted upon. (Letters to R. Polwhele, etc., 
p. 18; Lockhart, I. 361). The following book contains a part of 
the same material : 

A Penni worth of Witte, Florice and Blancheflour, and other 
pieces of ancient English poetry, selected from the Auchinleck 
manuscript. (With an account of the Auchinleck manuscript by 
Sir Walter Scott) Edinburgh, 1857. Printed for the Abbotsford 
Club. 

1805 The Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

1806 Original Memoirs written during the great civil war; 

being the life of Sir H, Slingsby, and memoirs 
of Capt. Hodgson. With notes, etc. Edinburgh. 
[Edited by Scott anonymously.] 

Ballads and Lyrical Pieces. [Poems which had already 
appeared in various collections.] 
1808 Marmion. 

Memoirs of Captain Carleton, . . . including anecdotes 
of the war in Spain under the Earl of Peterborough, 
. . . written by himself. Edinburgh. (8vo, but 25 
copies were printed on large paper.) [Edited by 
Scott anonymously.] 

Scott was probably mistaken in considering this to be a genuine 
autobiography. (See Col. Parnell's argument in The English His- 
torical Review, vi:97.) It has been attributed to Defoe, and Col. 
Parnell attributes it to Swift, but the question of its authorship is 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 149 

still unsolved. The book was first published in 1728, but Scott 
used the edition of 1743, which he was so inaccurate as to take for 
the original edition; and as at that date Defoe had long been dead 
and Swift had lost his mind, the possibility of attributing it to 
either of them naturally would not occur to him. Scott wrote 
scarcely any notes, but his short introduction contains some inter- 
esting general reflections which are quoted by Lockhart. 

The Works of John Dryden, now first collected ; illus- 
trated with notes, historical, critical and explanatory, 
and a life of the author, by Walter Scott, Esq. 18 
vols, London. 

Second edition, 18 vols., Edinburgh, 1821. 

Another edition, revised and corrected by George Saintsbury, 
Edinburgh, 1882-1893. 

The Life of John Dryden (4to, only 50 copies printed). 
Memoirs of John Dryden, Paris, 1826. 

Memoirs of Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, written 
by himself, and Fragmenta Regalia, being a history 
of Queen Elizabeth's favourites, by Sir Robert Naun- 
ton. With explanatory annotations. Edinburgh. 
[Edited by Scott anonymously.] 

Scott contributed no introductions, but his notes are copious, 
especially with regard to the history of the Border. This is one 
of the books of which Scott is reported to have said to his pub- 
lisher, Mr. Constable, " Did I not do Hodgson, Carey, Carleton, 
etc., to serve you ; and did I ever ask or receive any remuneration ?" 
(Ballantyne's Refutation, etc., p. 76.) 

Queenhoo-Hall, a romance ; and Ancient Times, a 
drama. By the late Joseph Strutt, author of Rural 
Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. 
[Edited by Scott, who wrote a conclusion for Queen- 
hoo-Hall. This conclusion is given in an appendix 
to the introduction of Waverley.] Edinburgh. 
1809 The State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler . . . 
edited by Arthur Clifford ... to which is added a 
memoir of the life of Sir Ralph Sadler, with histori- 
cal notes, by Walter Scott, Esq. 2 vols. Edinburgh. 
(Also the same work in 3 vols., with same date.) 

The biography is included in all the editions of Scott's Prose 
Works. 



150 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

The Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, writ- 
ten by himself. With a prefatory memoir. Edin- 
burgh; printed by James Ballantyne & Co. for John 
Ballantyne & Co. and John Murray. (A reprint of 
Walpole's edition, with the prefatory memoir added.) 

It is a question whether Scott edited this book, but it has been 
ascribed to him, and is given under his name without hesitation 
in the British Museum catalogue. The prefatory memoir is short 
and largely made up of quotations, but it sounds as if Scott might 
have written it. The book is one to which he often refers. Mr. 
Sidney Lee, in his edition of the Autobiography, says merely, 
" Walpole's edition was reprinted in 1770, 1809, and in 1826." Re- 
printed in the Universal Library: Biography, vol. I, London, 1853. 

1809-15 A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on the 
most interesting and entertaining subjects : but chiefly 
such as relate to the history and constitution of these 
kingdoms. Selected from an infinite number in print 
and manuscript, in the Royal, Cotton, Sion, and other 
public, as well as private, libraries; particularly that 
of the late Lord Somers. The second edition, re- 
vised, augmented, and arranged by Walter Scott, 
Esq. 13 vols. London. 

There are some additions. Scott says in the Advertisement: 
" The Memoirs of the Wars in the Low Countries by the gallant 
Williams, and the very singular account of Ireland by Derrick, 
are the most curious of those now published for the first time. 
. . . The introductory remarks and notes have been added by the 
present Editor, at the expense of some time and labour. It is 
needless to observe, that both have been expended upon a humble 
and unambitious, though not, it is hoped, an useless task. The 
object of the introductions was to present such a short and sum- 
mary view of the circumstances under which the Historical and 
Controversial Tracts were respectively written, as to prevent the 
necessity of referring to other works. Such therefore, as refer 
to events of universal notoriety are but slightly and generally 
mentioned; such as concern less remarkable points of history are 
more fully explained. The Notes are in general illustrative of 
obscure passages, or brief notices of authorities, whether cor- 
roborative or contradictory of the text." The following book 
contains a part of the same material : 

The Image of Irelande with a Discoverie of Woodkarne. By 
John Derricke, 1581. With Notes by Sir Walter Scott. Edited by 
John Small. Edinburgh, 1883. (See Somas' Tracts, Vol. I.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 151 

1810 English Minstrelsy. Being a selection of fugitive 
poetry from the best English authors, with some orig- 
inal pieces hitherto unpublished. 2 vols. Edinburgh. 

The Centenary Catalogue says that Scott and his friend 
William Erskine edited this book together. In the Advertisement 
the publishers (John Ballantyne & Co.) say: "To one eminent 
individual, whose name they do not venture to particularize, they 
are indebted for most valuable assistance in selection, arrangement, 
and contribution; and to that individual they take this oppor- 
tunity to present the humble tribute of their thanks, for a series 
of kindnesses, of which that now acknowledged is among the 
least." There is no critical apparatus. The book contains original 
poems by Scott, Southey, Rogers, Joanna Baillie, and others not 
so well known. 

The Lady of the Lake. 

Memoirs of the Duke of Sully. Translated from the 
French [by Charlotte Lennox] , . . a new edition 
. . . corrected, with additional notes, some letters of 
Henry the Great, and a brief historical introduction 
embellished with portraits. 5 vols. London. 

Another edition, 4 vols. London 1858, has these words on the 
title-page : " A new edition, revised and corrected ; with addi- 
tional notes, and an historical introduction, attributed to Sir 
Walter Scott." I have found no external evidence that Scott was 
the editor. The introduction sounds as if Scott wrote it, but 
that so much work could have been done by him without occasion- 
ing any record seems unlikely. There is a historical introduction 
of 35 pp., and copious notes. The book is one with which Scott 
was familiar. See Memoirs of Robert Carey, pp. 34 and 41. 

The Poetical Works of Anna Seward, with extracts 
from her literary correspondence. Edited by Walter 
Scott, Esq. 3 vols. Edinburgh. 

The biographical preface is given in the Miscellaneous Prose 
Works. The notes are by Miss Seward. 

Ancient British Drama, in three volumes. London. 
(Printed for William Miller, by James Ballantyne & 
Co., Edinburgh.) 

I find no evidence that Scott was the editor of this book, but 
it is sometimes ascribed to him in library catalogues. It con- 
tains merely a two-page introduction and brief notes, and a col- 
lection of plays. (See above, p. 52, note.) 



152 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

1811 The Modern British Drama, in five volumes. London. 
(Printed for William Miller, by James Ballantyne & 
Co., Edinburgh.) 

Vols. I and II, Tragedies, with introduction in vol. I. 

Vols. Ill and IV, Comedies, with introduction in vol. III. 

Vol. V, Operas and Farces, with introduction. 

These volumes apparently belong to the same collection as the 
Ancient British Drama, noted above, and the external evidence 
for Scott's authorship is the same. But the introductions are 
fuller, and they sound very much like Scott. (See above, p. 52, 
note.) 

The Vision of Don Roderick. 

Memoirs of the Court of Charles II, by Count Gram- 

mont. With numerous additions and illustrations. 

London. [Edited by Scott.] 

Reprinted in 1846, 1853, 1864. This last edition, in the Bohn 
Library, has about 100 pp. of historical notes. 

Secret History of the Court of James the First. With 
notes and introductory remarks. 2 vols. Edinburgh. 
[Edited by Scott anonymously.] 

The book contains i. Osborne's Traditional Memoirs; 2. Sir 
Anthony Welldon's Court and Character of King James ; 3. Aulicus 
Coquinariae; 4. Sir Edward Peyton's Divine Catastrophe of the 
House of Stuarts. 

181 3 Rokeby. 

Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I., by Sir Philip 
Warwick, Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott anony- 
mously.] 

The Bridal of Triermain. 

1 8 14 Illustrations of Northern Antiquities from the earlier 

Teutonic and Scandinavian romances, by Robert 
Jamieson . . . w^ith an abstract of the Eyrbyggja- 
Saga; being the early annals of that district of Ice- 
land lying around the promontory called Sudefells, 
by Walter Scott. Edinburgh. 

See also Northern Antiquities by P. H. Mallet, London, 1847; 
and the edition in Bohn's Library, 1890. 

Lockhart says : " Any one who examines the share of the work 
which goes under Weber's name will see that Scott had a con- 
siderable hand in that also. The rhymed versions from the Nibe- 
lungen Lied came, I can have no doubt, from his pen." (^Lockhart, 
II, 320.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 153 

The Works of Jonathan Swift, containing- additional 

letters, tracts, and poems, not hitherto published ; with 

notes and a life of the author, by Walter Scott. 19 

vols. Edinburgh. 

Second edition, revised, Edinburgh, 1824. 
Memoirs of Jonathan Swift, Paris, 1826. 

The Letting of Humour's Blood in the Head Vaine, 
etc. By Samuel Rowlands. Edinburgh. [Edited 
by Scott. His name is not given, but the Advertise- 
ment is dated at Abbotsford.] 

This is an exact reproduction of the 161 1 edition, except for the 
addition of a few pages containing the Advertisement and the 
notes. Another edition was printed in 1815. 

Waverley. 
1814-17 The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland; 
comprising specimens of architecture and sculpture, 
and other vestiges of former ages, accompanied by 
descriptions. Together with illustrations of remark- 
able incidents in Border history and tradition, and 
original poetry. By Walter Scott, Esq. 2 vols. 
4to. London. 

Another edition, in 2 vols, folio, London, 1889. 

Lockhart says the introduction to this work was written in 
1817, but this is a mistake, for it is in the first volume, which was 
published in 1814. 

18 1 5 The Lord of the Isles. 

Guy Mannering. 

The Field of Waterloo. 

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, 

by Robert Kirk. 

The attribution of this to Scott rests on a letter by George 
Ticknor, in Allibone's Dictionary (vol. II, p. 1967) in which he says: 
" Kirk's Secret Commonwealth, a curious tract, of about a hun- 
dred quarto pages, on Fairy Superstitions and second sight, origi- 
nally published in 1691, and of which, in 1815, Mr. Scott had 
caused a hundred copies to be privately printed by the Ballantynes, 
with additions, a circumstance, I think, not noted by Lockhart." 
Mr. Lang thinks the book was never printed until 1815. (See his 
edition, London, 1893). This 1815 edition of 100 copies was made, 
he says, from a manuscript copy preserved in the Advocates' 
Library, for Longman & Co. He quotes one of Scott's references 
to the book, but does not intimate that Scott was the editor. 



154 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

Memorie of the Somervilles ; being a history of the 
baronial house of Somerville, by James, eleventh Lord 
Somerville. 2 vols. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott 
anonymously.] 

The additions by the editor consist of a short preface and abun- 
dant notes. 

1816 Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk. Edinburgh. 

These letters were anonymous, but Scott was always recognized 
as the author of them. They are contained in the Miscellaneous 
Prose Works. 

The Antiquary. 

Tales of my Landlord. First series : 

The Black Dwarf, 

Old Mortality. 

1817 Harold the Dauntless. 
Rob Roy. 

1818 Tales of my Landlord. Second series : 

The Heart of Midlothian. 
Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland . . . the 
fifth edition, with a large appendix, containing various 
important historical documents, hitherto unpublished; 
with an introduction and notes, by the editor, R. 
Jamieson . . . and the history of Donald the Ham- 
merer, from an authentic account of the family of 
Invernahyle (by Scott: see a note accompanying the 
text). 2 vols. London. 

Scott's contribution is short. See also Appendix IV, which is 
taken " from a manuscript in the possession of the Gartmore 
Family, communicated by Walter Scott Esq." Scott's name had 
become so valuable that the publishers tried to put it on the title- 
page of this book, to his great indignation. (See Constable, III, 
119-20.) 

1818-24 The Encyclopaedia Britannica: Supplement. [For 
this work Scott wrote the following essays :] Chivalry, 
published in 1818; The Drama, published in 1819; Ro- 
mance, published in 1824. (These are given in the 
Miscellaneous Prose Works.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 155 

1819 Tales of my Landlord. Third series : 

The Bride of Lammermoor. 

A Legend of Montrose. 
The Visionary, by Somnambulus. (A political satire 

in three letters, republished from the Edinburgh 

Weekly Journal.) Edinburgh. 
Description of the Regalia of Scotland. Edinburgh. 

This has been reprinted many times. It was included also in 
Provincial Antiquities. 

Ivanhoe. 
1819-26 The Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery 
of Scotland, with descriptive illustrations by Sir 
Walter Scott, Bart. [First published in ten parts 
between 1819 and 1826.] 2 vols. London, 1826. 
4to. 

1820 The Monastery. 
The Abbot. 

Memorials of the Haliburtons. Edinburgh. [Edited 
by Scott anonymously.] 

30 copies were printed in 1820, and 30 more in 1824. 

Reprinted, London, 1877, for the Royal Historical Society, in 
Genealogical Memoirs of the Family of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., 
of Abbotsford, by the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D. 

Trivial Poems and Triolets. Written in obedience to 
Mrs. Tomkin's commands. By Patrick Carey. Lon- 
don. [Edited by Scott. His name is not given, but 
the introduction is dated at Abbotsford.] 

A thin 4to, with a short introduction and a few notes. A part 
of the material had been used in the Edinburgh Annual Register 
for 1810. 

1 82 1 Northern Memoirs, calculated for the meridian of Scot- 

land. To which is added the contemplative and prac- 
tical angler. Writ in the year 1658. By Richard 
Franck. A new edition, with preface and notes. 
Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott,] 

Kenilworth. 

The Pirate. 



156 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

1821-4 The Novelists' Library. Edited, with prefatory me- 
moirs, by Sir Walter Scott. 10 vols. London. 

Also Lives of the Novelists, 2 vols., Paris, 1825. A recent edition 
is that published, with an introduction by Austin Dobson, by the 
Oxford University Press (No. 94 in The World's Classics). 
When these Lives were issued among the Miscellaneous Prose 
Works some of the biographical prefaces were put with them, 
and also biographical notices, reprinted from the Edinburgh 
Weekly Journal, of Charles Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, 
John Lord Somerville, King George III, Lord Byron, and The 
Duke of York. I give below the names of certain books in which 
Scott's biographies were utilized, but the list is probably far from 
complete : 

An Account of the death and funeral procession of Frederick 
Duke of York, etc. To which is subjoined Sir Walter Scott's 
Character of His Royal Highness. By John Sykes. Newcastle, 
1827. 

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman. By 
Laurence Sterne, A.M., with a life of the author, by Sir Walter 
Scott. Paris, 1832. (Baudry's Foreign Library.) 

Beauties of Sterne, with some account of his writings by Sir 
Walter Scott. Amsterdam, 1836. 

Select Works of Smollett. Memoir by Sir W. Scott. Phila- 
delphia, 1849. 

The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel De Foe. With 
a biographical memoir of the author, literary prefaces to the 
various pieces, illustrative notes, etc., including all contained in the 
edition attributed to the late Sir Walter Scott, with considerable 
additions. 20 vols., London, 1840. 

The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel de Foe. With 
prefaces and notes, including those attributed to Sir Walter Scott. 
6 vols., London, 1854-6. (Bohn's British Classics.) 

The Rambler, by Samuel Johnson LL.D., with a sketch of the 
author's life by Sir Walter Scott. 2 vols., London, 187? 

1822 Chronological Notes of Scottish Affairs, from 1680 till 
1 701 ; being chiefly taken from the diary of Lord 
Fountainhall. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott.] 

See Historical Notices of Scotish Affairs, selected from the 
manuscripts of Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, bart. 2 vols. 
Edinburgh, 1848, printed for the Bannatyne club. Here Scott's 
edition is referred to, and his introduction is reprinted. The 
book was re-edited because Scott did not use the original manu- 
script, but an interpolated transcript, and he had no means for 
accurately determining the original text. 

Halidon Hill, a dramatic sketch. 

Macduff's Cross (in Joanna Baillie's Poetical Miscel- 
lanies). 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 157 

Military Memoirs of the Great Civil War. Being the 
military memoirs of John Gwynne ; and an account 
of the Earl of Glencairn's expedition, as general of 
His Majesty's forces, in the highlands of Scotland, in 
the years 1653 and 1654, by a person who was eye 
and ear witness to every transaction. . . . Edinburgh. 
[Edited by Scott. His name is not given, but the 
introduction is dated at Abbotsford.] 
There are some notes, and a short historical introduction. 

Sketch of the Life and Character of the late Lord Kin- 
neder. [Edited by Scott. A postscript says: "This 
notice was chiefly drawn up by the late Mr. Hay 
Donaldson."] Edinburgh. 

Only a few copies were printed, for private distribution. 

The Fortunes of Nigel. 

1823 Peveril of the Peak, 
Quentin Durward. 
St. Ronan's Well. 

1824 Lays of the Lindsays, being poems by the ladies of the 

House of Balcarras. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott, 
and designed as a contribution to the Bannatyne Club, 
but suppressed after being printed.] 
Redgauntlet. 

1825 Auld Robin Gray; a ballad. By the Rt. Honourable 

Lady Anne Barnard, born Lady Anne Lindsay, of 
Balcarras. [Edited by Scott for the Bannatyne Club.] 
Tales of the Crusaders : 
The Betrothed. 
The Talisman. 

1826 Letters of Malachi Malagrowther on the Currency. (To 

the editor of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal.) 3 
parts. Edinburgh. 
Woodstock. 
1826? Shakspeare [edited by Scott and Lockhart?], volumes 
n, HI, and IV, without title page and date. Printed 
by James Ballantyne & Co. 



158 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

Scott and Lockhart began in 1823 or 1824 to prepare an edition 
of Shakspere. In Jan., 1825, Constable wrote to a London book- 
seller : " It gives me great pleasure to tell you that the first sheet 
of Sir Walter Scott's Shakspeare is now in type . . . This I ex- 
pect will be a first-rate property." (Constable's Correspondence, 
II, 344.) At the time of Constable's bankruptcy in 1826 there was 
a disagreement in regard to the ownership of the property. Scott 
wrote to Lockhart, May 30, 1826, " What do you about Shak- 
speare? Constable's creditors seem desirous to carry it on. Cer- 
tainly their bankruptcy breaks the contract. For me c'est egal: I 
have nothing to do with the emoluments, and I can with very 
little difficulty discharge my part of the matter, which is the 
Prolegomena, and Life and Times." (Lang's Lockhart, I, 409.) 
In 1827 the question of carrying on the work was still undecided, 
and it was also mentioned in a letter in 1830. (Lang's Lockhart 
II, 13 and 59). The project was ultimately abandoned, and the 
fate of that part of the work which was actually in print is un- 
known. In the Barton Collection in the Boston Public Library 
is preserved what is perhaps a unique copy of three volumes of 
the set of ten that Scott and Lockhart undertook to prepare. But 
as the books are bound up without title-pages, and as the com- 
mentary contains nothing that would determine its authorship, 
the attribution is probable rather than certain. These volumes 
include twelve of the comedies. On the fly-leaf of one of them 
is a note written by Mr. Rodd, a London bookseller. He says : 
" I purchased these three volumes from a sale at Edinburgh. 
They were entered in the catalogue as ' Shakespeare's Works, 
edited by Sir Walter Scott and Lockhart, vols, ii, iii, iv, all pub- 
lished, unique '." It was not positively known that such a work 
had been planned until the publication of Constable's Correspon- 
dence in 1874. At that time Justin Winsor wrote a letter to the 
Boston Advertiser (March 21, 1874) in which he said: "The 
account of the Barton collection, which was printed fifteen years 
ago, contained the earliest public mention, I believe, of the suppo- 
sition that Scott ever engaged in such a work, which this life of 
Constable now renders certain. These later corroborative state- 
ments give a peculiar interest to the volumes which are now in 
this library and which are perhaps the only ones of the edition 
now in existence." The introductions to the plays are each only 
a page or two long, and are mainly, like the notes, compilations. 
The book corresponds fairly well with the description given in 
Constable. (See Vol. Ill, pp. 183, 193, 237-S, 241, 242, 244, 246, 
305, 321, 442. See also Lang's Lockhart, I, 308-9, 395^, and 
Lang's Introduction to Peveril of the Peak. 

1827 The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of the 
French. With a preHminary view of the French 
Revolution. By the author of Waverley. 9 vols. 
Edinburgh. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 159 

Chronicles of the Canongate. First series: 
The Highland Widow. 
The Two Drovers. 
The Surgeon's Daughter. 

Memoirs of the Marchioness de la Roche jaquelin. Trans- 
lated from the French. Edinburgh. (Constable's 
Miscellany, Vol. V. Introduction and notes by Scott.) 

The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott. 

6 vols. Edinburgh, 1827, and Boston, 1829. 
9 vols. Paris, 1827-34. 

30 vols. London, 1834-46. (Containing many of the reviews 
contributed by Scott to periodicals.) 

Same, first 28 vols. (Omitting the Letters on Demonology and 
Witchcraft.) Edinburgh, 1842-6, 1851, and 1861. 

7 vols. Paris, 1837-8. 

8 vols. Paris, 1840? 

3 vols. Edinburgh, 1841-2, 1846, and 1854. 

1827-55 The Bannatyne Miscellany ; containing original 
papers and tracts relating to the history and literature 
of Scotland. (Edited by Sir Walter Scott, D. Laing, 
and T. Thomson.) 3 vols. 

1828 Tales of a Grandfather. First series. 3 vols. Edin- 
burgh. 
Religious Discourses. By a layman. London. 

Two sermons written by Sir Walter for George Huntly Gordon, 
then a Probationer. Afterwards published by Gordon, with the 
author's permission, to raise money. 

Chronicles of the Canongate. Second series : 
The Fair Maid of Perth. 

Proceedings in the Court-martial held upon John, Mas- 
ter of Sinclair, captain-lieutenant in Preston's regi- 
ment, for the murder of Ensign Schaw of the same 
regiment, and Captain Schaw, of the Royals, 17 Oc- 
tober, 1708; with correspondence respecting that 
transaction. Edinburgh. 

Edited by Sir Walter Scott and presented by him to the Rox- 
burghe club. Some of the same material seems to have been 
used in the book named below : 

Memoirs of the Insurrection in 1715, by John, Master of Sin- 
clair. With notes by Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh, 1858, printed 
for the Abbotsford Club. 



160 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

1829 Papers relative to the Regalia of Scotland. Edinburgh. 

Edited by Sir Walter Scott and presented to the mem- 
bers of the Bannatyne Club by William Bell, Esq. 
Memorials of George Bannatyne, 1 545-1608. Edited 
by Sir Walter Scott for the Bannatyne Club. Edin- 
burgh. 

Scott wrote the memoir of George Bannatjme which occupies 
the first 25 pages of the book. This memoir is also to be found in 
the publications of the Hunterian Club, part 8, published in 1886. 

Anne of Geierstein. 

Tales of a Grandfather. Second series. 
1829-32 Novels, Tales, and Romances, with introductions and 
notes by the author. (The " Opus Magnum.") 

The same material is used in the following books : 
Introductions and notes and illustrations to the novels, tales, 
and romances of the author of Waverley. 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1833. 
Autobiography of Sir Walter Scott. Philadelphia, 1831. Ander- 
son, in his bibliography of Scott, gives this as a supposititious 
work, but with the exception of the title it is genuine, for it is 
simply the piecing together of Scott's introductions to his novels. 

1830 Tales of a Grandfather. Third series. 

The Doom of Devorgoil, and Auchindrane or The Ayr- 
shire Tragedy. 

Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, addressed to J. 
G. Lockhart, Esq. London. (The Family Library.) 

Other editions : New York, 1845 ; London, 1868 and 1876, (illus- 
trated by Cruikshank) ; London 1884, with an introduction by 
Henry Morley. Included in the 30 vol. edition of the Miscel- 
laneous Prose works, but not in the 28 vol. edition. 

Poems, with prefaces by the author. 11 vols. Intro- 
ductory Remarks on Popular Poetry (prefixed to Min- 
strelsy, Vol I) and Essay on Imitations of the An- 
cient Ballad (prefixed to Minstrelsy, Vol. III). 

These essays were printed in 1830 and attached to the edition of 
the poems then on sale. They were first regularly included in the 
edition of 1833. 

The History of Scotland. (Lardner's Cabinet Cyclo- 
pedia.) 2 vols. London. [Not in the Miscella- 
neous Prose Works.] 

183 1 Tales of a Grandfather. Fourth series. History of 

France. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 161 

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., including a Journal 
of his Tour to the Hebrides, by James Boswell, Esq. 
New edition with numerous anecdotes and notes by 
The Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, M.P. . . . lo 
vols. London. [Scott wrote and signed the notes 
for the Tour to the Hebrides.] 

Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane 
Macdonald, for the murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant 
in General Guise's regiment of foot. June, A. D. 
1754. Edinburgh. 

"To the members of the Bannatyne Club, this copy of a trial, 
mvolving a curious point of evidence, is presented, by Walter 
Scott." There is an introduction of 11 pages, giving the story 
of the crime, and bringing together instances from literature and 
history of the evidence of ghosts being cited in trials. That is 
the "curious point of evidence" referred to. The proceedings 
of the court are then reprinted without annotation. 

1832 Tales of my Landlord. Fourth series: 

Count Robert of Paris. 

Castle Dangerous. 
1848 Two Bannatyne Garlands from Abbotsford. 

This little book was prepared for members of the Bannatyne 
club by the secretary, D. Laing. It contains two ballads— of which 
one is ancient and one a modern imitation written by Robert 
Surtees— annotated by Scott. 

1889 Reliquiae Trottosienses, or Catalogue of the Gabions of 

the late Jonathan Oldbuck. (Partially published in 
Harper's Magazine for April, 1889: Vol. Ixxviii, pp. 
778-788. This fragment describing the main apart- 
ments at Abbotsford is the only part of the Reliquiae 
Trottosienses that has been printed. There is a short 
introduction by Mary Monica Maxwell Scott.) 
The same material was included in the following book : 
Abbotsford, the personal relics and antiquarian treasures of Sir 
Walter Scott, described by the Hon. Mary Monica Maxwell Scott. 
London, 1893. 

1890 The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, from the original man- 

uscript at Abbotsford. (Edited by David Douglas.) 
2 vols. Edinburgh. 

Second edition, 1891. Large extracts from this Journal had 
previously been published in Lockhart's Life of Scott 
11 



162 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

2, Contributions to Periodicals, 

(a) Reviews 

(Most of these essays are reprinted in the 28 and 30 volume 
editions of Scott's Miscellaneous Prose Works. Articles not in- 
cluded in that collection are marked by a note indicating the evi- 
dence on which they are attributed to Scott.) 

1803 Amadis de Gaul, translated by Southey and by Rose. 

(Edinburgh Review, October, Vol. III.) 
Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry. (Edinburgh, 
October. Vol. III. Not in M. P. W. See Lock- 
hart, Vol. I, p. 335.) 

1804 Godwin's Life of Chaucer. (Edinburgh, J annary. Vol. 

IIL) 

Ellis's Speciinens of the Early English Poets. (Edin- 
burgh, April. Vol. IV.) 

The Life and Works of Chatterton. (Edinburgh, April. 
Vol. IV.) 

1805 Johnes's Translation of Froissart. (Edinburgh, Jan- 

uary. Vol. V.) 

Colonel Thornton's Sporting Tour. (Edinburgh, Jan- 
uary. Vol. V.) 

Fleetwood, a novel by William Godwin. (Edinburgh, 
April. Vol. VI.) 

The New Practice of Cookery. (Edinburgh, July. 
Vol. VI.) 

The Ossianic Poems. (Edinburgh, July. Vol. VI. 
Not in M. P. W. See Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 409.) 

Todd's Edition of Spenser. (Edinburgh, October. Vol. 
VII.) 

1806 Ellis's Specimens of English Romance, and Ritson's 

Ancient English Metrical Romances. (Edinburgh, 

January. Vol. VII.) 
The Miseries of Human Life. [By Rev, James Beres- 

ford.] (Edinburgh, October. Vol. IX.) 
Miscellaneous Poetry by the Hon. William Herbert. 

(Edinburgh, October. Vol. IX.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 163 

1809 Reliques of Burns, collected by R. H, Cromek. {Quar- 

terly Review, February. Vol. I.) 

Southey's Translation of The Cid. (Quarterly, Feb- 
ruary. Vol. I.) 

Sir John Carr's Caledonian Sketches. (Quarterly, Feb- 
ruary, Vol. I.) 

Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming and other poems. 
(Quarterly, May. Vol. I.) 

John de Lancaster, a novel by Richard Cumberland. 
(Quarterly, May. Vol. I.) 

The Battles of Talavera, a poem [by John Wilson 
Croker]. (Quarterly, November. Vol. II.) 

1 810 The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio, a ro- 

mance [by C. R. Maturin]. (Quarterly, May. Vol. 
III.) 
Collections of Ballads and Songs by R. H. Evans and 
John Aiken. (Quarterly, May. Vol. III.) 

1811 Southey's Curse of Kehama. (Quarterly, February. 

Vol. V.) 

1815 Emma and other novels by Jane Austen. (Quarterly, 

October. Vol. XIV. Not in M. P. W. See Lock- 
hart, Vol. IV, p. 3.) 

1816 The Culloden Papers. (Quarterly, Ja.nua.ry. Vol. XIV.) 
Childe Harold, Canto III, and other poems by Lord 

Byron. (Quarterly, October. Vol. XVI.) 

1817 Tales of My Landlord. [Probably written with the 

help of William Erskine. See Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 
81. See also the Introduction to Waverley, written 
in 1830.] (Quarterly, January. Vol. XVI.) 

1818 Douglas on Military Bridges. (Quarterly, May. Vol. 

XVIII. Not in M. P. W. See Lockhart, Vol. Ill, 

P- I73-) 
Kirkton's History of the Church of Scotland, edited by 

C. K. Sharpe. (Quarterly, May. Vol. XVIII.) 
Letters from Horace Walpole to George Montague. 

(Quarterly, April. Vol. XIX. Not in M. P. W. 

See Memoir of John Murray, Vol. II, p. 12.) 
Childe Harold, Canto IV. (Quarterly, April. Vol. 

XIX.) 



164 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

Women or Pour et Contre, a tale [by C. R. Maturin], 
(Edinburgh, June. Vol. XXX.) 

Frankenstein, a novel [by Mrs. Shelley]. (Black- 
wood, March. Vol. II.) 

Remarks on General Gourgaud's Narrative. (Black- 
wood, November. Vol. IV. Not in M. P. W. See 
Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 238.) 
1824 The Correspondence of Lady Suffolk. (QMar^^r/3;^ Jan- 
uary. Vol. XXX.) 

1826 Pepys' Diary. (Quarterly, March. Vol. XXXIII.) 
Boaden's Life of Kemble, and Kelly's Reminiscences. 

(Quarterly, June. Vol. XXXIV.) 
The Omen [by John Gait]. (Blackwood, July. Vol. 
XX.) 

1827 Mackenzie's Life and Works of John Home. (Quar- 

terly, June. Vol. XXXVI.) 

The Forester's Guide, by Robert Monteath. On Plant- 
ing Waste Lands. (Quarterly, October. Vol. XXXVI.) 

On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition, and par- 
ticularly on the Works of Hoffman. (Foreign Quar- 
terly Review, July. Vol. I.) 

See also Contes Fantastiques de E. T. A. Hoffmann, traduits 
de r Allemand par M. Loeve-Veimars, et precedes d'une notice 
historique sur Hoffmann par Walter Scott. Paris, 1830. 16 vols. 

1828 The Planter's Guide, by Sir Henry Steuart. On Land- 

scape Gardening. (Quarterly, March. Vol. XXXVII.) 
Sir Humphrey Davy's Salmonia or Days of Fly-fishing. 

(Quarterly, October. Vol. XXXVIII.) 
Moliere. (Foreign Quarterly Review, February. Vol, 

IL) 

1829 Hajji Baba in England; and The Kuzzilbash, a tale of 

Khorasan. (Quarterly, January. Vol. XXXIX.) 
Ritson's Annals of the Caledonians, Picts, and Scots, etc. 

(Quarterly, July. Vol. XLI.) 
Tytler's History of Scotland. (Quarterly, November. 

Vol. XLI.) 
Revolutions of Naples in 1647 and 1648. (Foreign 

Quarterly Reviezv, August. Vol. IV. Not in M. P. 

W. See Journal, Vol. I, p. 145, and Vol. II, p. 278.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 165 

1830 Southey's Life of John Bunyan. {Quarterly, October 

Vol. XLIII.) 

1831 Pitcairn's Ancient Criminal Trials. {Quarterly Feb- 

ruary. Vol. XLIV.) 

{b) Contributions to the Edinburgh Annual Register 

(The dates given are those on the volumes. In most cases the 
book was issued about a year and a half after the nominal date 
Most of Scott s contributions are unsigned. Those which were 
afterwards included in the collected edition of his poems are in 
this list marked "Poems"; in other cases (unless the article is 
signed) a note is made of the reason for attributing it to Scott). 

1808 Vol. I, part 2. 

The Bard's Incantation. Poems. 

To a Lady, with Flowers from a Roman Wall. Poems. 

The Violet. Poems. 

Hunting Song. Poems. 

The Resolve. Poems. 

View of the changes proposed and adopted in the ad- 
ministration of justice in Scotland. (See Lockhart 
Vol. II, p. 154.) 

Living Poets of Great Britain. (From internal evi- 
dence I think this article may have been written by 
Scott, and am sure that he dictated many of the 
opinions it expresses, if he is not responsible for the 
whole.) 
1809 Vol. II, part 2. 

The Vision of Don Roderick. (Reprinted from the first 
edition.) Poems. 

Epitaph designed for a Monument to be erected in Lich- 
field Cathedral to the Rev. Thomas Seward. Poems. 

Cursory remarks upon the French order of battle, par- 
ticularly in the campaigns of Buonaparte. (See 
Lockhart, Vol. II, p. i6i.) 

Periodical Criticism. (From internal evidence I am 
sure that this was written by Scott. The style is 
decidedly more interesting than that of the article on 
the poets, in the volume for the preceding year.) 



166 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

The Inferno of Altisidora. (This immediately follows 
the article on Periodical Criticism, and is a burlesque 
sketch on the same subject. It serves to introduce 
the following imitations, respectively, of Crabbe, 
Moore, and Scott himself.) 

The Poacher. 

" Oh say not, my love, with that mortified air." 

The Vision of Triermain. 

1810 Vol. Ill, part 2. 

Account of the poems of Patrick Carey, a poet of the 
seventeenth century. (Afterwards prefixed to the 
volume of Carey's poems published in 1820. See 
Lockhart, Vol, II, pp. 245-8.) 

1811 Vol. IV, part 2. 

Biographical memoir of John Leyden, M.D. (In the 
Miscellaneous Prose Works.) 

1812 Vol. V, part 2. 

Extracts from a journal kept during a coasting voyage 
through the Scottish Islands. (Published in complete 
form in Lockhart, Vol. II.) 

1813 Vol. VI. 

The Dance of Death. Poems. 

Romance of Dunois, from the French. Poems. 

Song for the anniversary meeting of the Pitt Club of 

Scotland. Poems. 
Song on the lifting of the banner of the House of Buc- 

cleuch, at a great football match on Carterhaugh. 

Poems. 

1814 Vol. VII. 

Historical Review of the Year. (See Lockhart, Vol. 
Ill, p. 76.) 

1815 Vol. VIII. 

Historical Review of the Year. (See Lockhart, Vol III, 

p. 124.) 
The Search after Happiness, or the Quest of Sultaun 

Solimaun. (Reprinted from the Sale-Room. See 

Lockhart, Vol. Ill, pp. 89-90.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 167 

1816. Vol. IX. 

The Noble Moringer. Translated from the German. 
Poems. (See also the introduction to The Be- 
trothed.) 
1817 Vol. X. 

Farewell Address, spoken by Mr. Kemble to the Edin- 
burgh Theatre, on the 29th March, 181 7. (Reprinted 
from the S de-Room.) Poems. 
1824 Vol. XVII. 

To Mons. Alexandre. 

(c) Contributions to other periodicals 

Scott contributed frequently to The Edinburgh Weekly 
Journal, edited and published by James Ballantyne. Some of 
the articles are reprinted in the Miscellaneous Prose Works. 
Lockhart reprints in the Life Scott's account of the coronation 
of George IV., and his Reply to General Gourgaud. 

Scott also contributed to The Sale-Room, a weekly paper 
edited and published by John Ballantyne from January 4 to 
July 12, 1817 (28 numbers). (See Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 89.) 
To The Keepsake, an annual, Scott contributed in 1828 The 
Tapestried Chamber, My Aunt Margaret's Mirror, and The 
Laird's Jock, and in 1830 The House of Aspen. 

In Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. I, appeared three 
articles entitled " Notices concerning the Scottish Gypsies," for 
which Scott furnished a large part of the material. (Numbers 
for April, May, and September, 1817.) Lockhart says that 
Scott dictated to Thomas Pringle " a collection of anecdotes 
concerning Scottish gypsies, which attracted a good deal of 
notice." The first article refers to " Mr. Walter Scott, a gen- 
tleman to whose distinguished assistance and advice we have 
been on the present occasion very peculiarly indebted, and who 
has not only furnished us with many interesting particulars 
himself, but has also obligingly directed us to other sources of 
curious information." Scott quotes from the first of the three 
articles in his review of Tales of My Landlord, and he after- 
wards used the same anecdotes in the introduction to Guy 
Mannering. 



168 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

3. Books which contain letters written by Scott. 

(As there is no complete collection of Scott's letters it has 
been thought wise to name the various sources, so far as the 
letters have appeared at all in print, from which such a collection 
might be made. The list includes only those books or articles 
in which letters were published for the first time; yet it is prob- 
ably far from exhaustive. Notes are given in regard to the num- 
ber or kind of the letters from Scott to be found in some of the 
less-known books.) 

Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott, by J. G. Lockhart. 

Edinburgh, 7 vols. 1837-S. 10 vols. 1839. Abridged edition 1848. 
The edition referred to throughout this study is that published by 
Macmillan and Company in 5 volumes, 1900. 

Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott [edited by D. Douglas]. 

2 vols. Edinburgh, 1894. 

Letters and Recollections of Sir Walter Scott, by Mrs. Hughes 
(of Uffington), edited by Horace G. Hutchinson. 

London, 1904. (First published in The Century, xliv: 424 and 
566; July and August, 1903.) 

The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, by Andrew 
Lang, from Abbotsford and Milton Lockhart mss. 
and other original sources. 

2 vols. London, 1897. 

These volumes contain many letters from Scott to Lockhart. 

Memoir and Correspondence of the late John Murray, with 
an account of the origin and progress of the House, 
1 768-1843, by Samuel Smiles. 

2 vols. London, 1891. 

This book contains many letters from Scott to Murray, who 
published some of Scott's works and was the proprietor of the 
Quarterly Review. 

Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents. A 
Memorial by his son Thomas Constable. 

3 vols. Edinburgh, 1873. 

The third volume is wholly taken up with an account of Scott's 
relations with Constable, his publisher, and many letters are given. 
See also Vol. II, pages 347 and 474. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 

[The Ballantyne and Lockhart Pamphlets.] 

I. Refutation of the Misstatements and Calumnies contained 

in Mr. Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, bart, re- 
specting the Messrs. Ballantyne, by the trustees and 
son of the late Mr. James Ballantyne. (1835,) 

II. The Ballantyne Humbug Handled by the author of the 

Life of Sir Walter Scott. (1839.) 

III. Reply to Mr. Lockhart's Pamphlet, entitled " The Bal- 

lantyne-Humbug Handled," etc. (1839.) 

The two last pamphlets contain numerous letters of Scott's. 
For a history of Scott's publishing operations these pamphlets 
should be studied in connection with the Memoirs of Lockhart, 
Murray, and Constable. 

Annals of a Publishing House ; William Blackwood and his 
sons, their magazine and friends. By Mrs. Oliphant. 

3rd edition, 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1897. 

About half a dozen letters not elsewhere published are given in 
this book. 

Letters from and to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., edited 
by Alexander Allardyce, with a memoir by Rev. W. 
K. R. Bedford. 

2 vols. Edinburgh, 1888. 

Lockhart wrote to Sharpe in 1834: "He had preserved so many 
letters of yours. . . . that I must suppose the correspondence was 
considered by himself as one not of the common sort." (Vol. H, 
p. 479-) Both men were authors and antiquaries, and their letters 
as given in this book illustrate their favorite studies. 

Lady Louisa Stuart. Selections from her manuscripts, edited 
by Hon. James Home. 

London, 1899. (One section of the book is entitled "Unpub- 
lished Letters of Sir Walter Scott and Lady Louisa Stuart.") 

Abbotsford Notanda, by Robert Carruthers. Subjoined to the 
Life of Sir Walter Scott by Robert Chambers, edited 
by W. Chambers. 

London, 1871. 

Letters from Scott to Hogg and Laidlaw are included. 

Memorials of Coleorton, being letters from Coleridge, Words- 
worth and his Sister, Southey, and Sir Walter Scott, 



170 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

to Sir George and Lady Beaumont of Coleorton, 
Leicestershire, 1803 to 1834. Edited, with introduc- 
tion and notes, by WilHam Knight. 

2 vols. Boston, 1887. 

The second volume contains three letters by Scott. 

The Letters of Sir Walter Scott and Charles Kirkpatrick 
Sharpe to Robert Chambers, 1821-45. With original 
memoranda of Sir Walter Scott, etc. [Edited by 

C. E. S. Chambers.] 
Edinburgh, 1904. 

Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott, by John Gibson. 

Edinburgh, 1871. 

Besides nine letters from Scott this book gives in full a memorial 
written by him in regard to the claim of Constable's trustee on 
Woodstock and Napoleon. 

Traditions and Recollections, Domestic, Clerical, and Literary; 
in which are included letters of Charles II, Cromwell, 
Fairfax, Edgecumbe, Macaulay, Wolcot, Opie, 
Whitaker, Gibbon, Duller, Courtenay, Moore, Down- 
man, Drewe, Seward, Darwin, Cowper, Hayley, Hard- 
inge, Sir Walter Scott, and other distinguished char- 
acters. By the Rev. R. Polwhele. 

2 vols. London, 1826. 

Vol. II. contains five letters from Scott. 

Letters of Sir Walter Scott, addressed to the Rev. R. Polwhele ; 

D. Gilbert, Esq. ; Francis Douce, Esq. ; etc. 

London, 1832. 

Twenty-eight letters from Scott are given, of which at least one 
had previously been published. 

A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the late William Taylor 
of Norwich, . . . containing his correspondence of 
many years with the late Robert Southey, Esq., and 
original letters from Sir Walter Scott, and other emi- 
nent literary men. Compiled and edited by J. W. 
Robberds, F.G.S., of Norwich. 

2 vols. London, 1843. 

Vol. I. contains two letters from Scott, of which the second has 
decided critical interest. See pp. 94-100. Vol. II. has one letter 
from Scott. See p. 533. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 171 

Memoirs of Sir William Knighton, Bart. G. C. H. . . . includ- 
ing his correspondence with many distinguished 
personages. By Lady Knighton. Philadelphia, 1838. 

Fourteen letters from Scott are given. 

Letters between James Ellis, Esq., and Walter Scott, Esq. 

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1850. 

The letters from Scott are two in number. 

Haydon's Correspondence and Table-talk, with a Memoir by 
his son, Frederick Wordsworth Haydon. 

2 vols., London, 1876. 

The first volume contains a few letters by Scott. 

The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, by his nephew, 
Pierre M. Irving. 

4 vols.. New York, 1865. 

Vol. I, p. 240, contains a letter to Brevoort; pp. 439-40, 44^-4 
and 4SO-I contain three letters to Irving. 

Memorials of James Hogg, by M. G. Garden. 

London, 1903. 

Four letters by Scott are included. 

Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, including sketches and anec- 
dotes of the most distinguished literary characters 
from 1794 to 1849, by ^- P- Gillies. 

3 vols. London, 1851. 

Vol. II, pp. 77-83, contains three letters from Scott; Vol. Ill, 
pp. 143-4, contains one. 

Sir Walter Scott. The story of his life, by R. Shelton 
Mackenzie, 

Boston, 1871. 

See p. 471 for a letter not published elsewhere. 

Byron's Letters and Journals. Rowland E. Prothero, ed. 

6 vols., London, 1898-1901. 

See Vol. VI, p. 55 for a letter of Scott's not published elsewhere. 

Catalogue of the Exhibition held at Edinburgh in July and 
August, 1 87 1, on occasion of the commemoration of 
the centenary of the birth of Sir Walter Scott. 

Edinburgh, 1872. 

This catalogue contains notices of the autograph letters which 
were exhibited, and prints a few of the letters. 



172 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and 
American Authors. ... By S. Austin Allibone. 

3 vols. Philadelphia, 1870. 

Two letters from Scott to Ticknor are given in the article on 
Scott. 

Fragments of Voyages and Travel, by Basil Hall. Third 
series. 

Chapter I. contains a letter written by Scott in the original 
manuscript of The Antiquary, explaining why the author particu- 
larly liked that novel. 

Letters, hitherto unpublished, written by members of Sir Wal- 
ter Scott's family to their old governess. Edited, 
with an introduction and notes, by the Warden of 
Wadham College, Oxford. 

London, 1905. 

See pp. 13-15 for a letter from Scott, and pp. 37-38 for a note 
of instructions in regard to his daughter Sophia's history lessons. 

Correspondence between J. Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter 
Scott. 

The Knickerbocker Magazine, xi:38o; April, 1838. 

The letter from Scott to Cooper quoted above, p. 102, is here given. 

Fiction, Fair and Foul. By John Ruskin. 

Nineteenth Century, viii : 195 ; August, 1880. 
A footnote on pp. 196-7 contains fragments of five letters from 
Scott to the builder of Abbotsford. 

Wordsworth's Poetical Works. Edited by William Knight. 

II vols. Edinburgh, 1882. 

See the index. Vol. XI, p. 196 has a letter from Scott which I 
think had not previously been published. Vol. X, p. 105, gives 
one which Lockhart quotes " very imperfectly," according to Prof. 
Knight. 

Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain . . . with 
biographical and historical memoirs of their lives and 
actions, by Edmund Lodge. 

London, 1835. 

Vol. I contains, in the appendix to the preface, a letter from 
Scott to the publisher, dated 25th March 1828. (See Lockhart, 
V, 350.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 173 

The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, edited by Augustus 
J. C. Hare. 

2 vols. Boston, 1895. 

This contains a few letters of Scott's, but only one which is 
not published elsewhere. 

A Short Account of successful exertions in behalf of the fath- 
erless and widows after the war in 1814; containing 
letters from Mr. Wilberforce, Sir Walter Scott, Mar- 
shal Bliicher, etc. By Rudolf Ackermann. 

Oxford, 1871. 

There is only one letter by Scott. 

The Courser's Manual, etc., by T. Goodlake. 1828. 

This book contains one letter by Scott, dated i6th October, 
1828, about an old Scottish poem entitled "The Last Words of 
Bonny Heck." (See Lockhart, V. 219, for what is doubtless the 
same letter.) 

The Chimney-sweeper's Friend and Climbing-boy's Album. 
Arranged by James Montgomery, 

London, 1824. 

The Preface contains part of a letter from Scott, in which he 
describes the construction of the chimneys at Abbotsford. (See 
Lockhart, IV. 158-9.) 



APPENDIX 11. 

1. Bibliographies of Scott 

Allibone, S. A. Dictionary of British and American Authors 
and Literature. 3 vols. Phil., 1870. 

Anderson, J. P. Bibliography of Scott, in the Life of Scott by 
C. D. Yonge (Great Writers Series). London, 1888. 

Lockhart's Life of Scott; the Centenary Catalogue (see above, 
p. 171) ; the British Museum Catalogue; the Diction- 
ary of National Biography. 

2. A partial list of the books used in the preparation of this 

Study, aside from those given in the bibliography of 
Scott's works. (See particularly the list of books 
which contain letters written by Scott: Appendix 
I. 3-) 

Adolphus, J. L. Letters to Richard Heber, Esq., containing 
critical remarks on the series of novels beginning with 
" Waverley," and an attempt to ascertain their author. 
Second edition. London, 1822. 

Aitken, G. A., ed. Romances and Narratives by Daniel Defoe. 
16 vols. London, 1895. 

Arnold, Matthew. Byron. In Essays in Criticism. Second 
series. London, 1889. 

Carlyle, Thomas. Sir Walter Scott. In Critical and Miscel- 
laneous Essays. 4 vols. London, 1857. 

Chambers, E. K. The Mediaeval Stage. 2 vols. Oxford, 1903. 

Chesterton, G. K. Varied Types. New York, 1903. 

Child, Francis J. English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 

vols. Boston, 1882-96. 

English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited from the 

collection of Francis James Child by Helen Child 

Sargent and George Lyman Kittredge. Boston, 1904. 

Clemens, S. L. (Mark Twain). Life on the Mississippi. 
Boston, 1883. 

174 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 175 

Cockburn, Henry. Memorials of His Time. Edinburgh, 1874. 
Coleridge, S. T. Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge. 2 vols. London, 1835. 
Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by E. H. 
Coleridge. 2 vols. Boston, 1895. 
Collins, J. Churton. Ephemera Critica. London, 1901. 
Courthope, W. J. A History of English Poetry. 4 vols. New 
York, 1 895-1 903. 
The Liberal Movement in English Literature. London, 
1885. 
Cunningham, Allan. Life of Scott. Boston, 1832. 
Dowden, Edward. Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. 

London, 1886. 
Fitzgerald, Percy. New History of the English Stage, from 
the Restoration to the liberty of the theatres, in con- 
nection with the patent houses. 2 vols. London, 1882. 
Forster, John. Walter Savage Landor, a biography. 2 vols. 

London, 1869. 
Freeman, E. A. The History of the Norman Conquest of 

England. 5 vols. New York, 1873. 
Gates, L. E. Three Studies in Literature. New York, 1899. 
Gillies, R. P. Recollections of Sir Walter Scott. (Republished 
in book form from Fraser's Magazine, Sept., Nov., 
Dec, 1835, and Jan., 1836.) 
Hazlitt, William. Collected Works, edited by A. R. Waller and 
Arnold Glover. 12 vols. London, 1902-4. (Spirit 
of the Age, Vol. IV; Plain Speaker, Vol. VH; Dra- 
matic Essays, Vol. VHL) 
Herford, C. H. The Age of Wordsworth. (Handbooks of 

English Literature.) London, 1905. 
Hogg, James, ed. Jacobite Relics of Scotland, being the 
songs, airs, and legends of the adherents of the House 
of Stuart. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1819-21. 
Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott. 
Glasgow, 1834. 
Hudson, W. H. Sir Walter Scott, London, 1901. 
Hunt, J. H. Leigh. Autobiography; with reminiscences of 



176 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

friends and contemporaries. 2 vols. New York, 

1850. 
Feast of the Poets. London, 1814. 
Lord Byron and some of his contemporaries. Second 

edition. 2 vols. London, 1828. 
Hutton, R. H. Sir Walter Scott. (English Men of Letters.) 

New York, 1878. 
Irving, Washington. Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, (First 

volume of the " Crayon Miscellany.") London, 1835. 
Lang, Andrew. Sir Walter Scott (Literary Lives). New 

York, 1906. 
Border edition of the Waverley Novels, 48 vols. Lon- 
don, 1 892-1 894. 
Laing, Malcolm, ed. Poems of Ossian, containing the poetical 

works of James MacPherson in prose and verse. 2 

vols. Edinburgh, 1805. 
Legare, H. S. Writings. . . . Edited by his sister. Charles- 
ton, S. C, 1846. 
Lounsbury, T. R. James Fenimore Cooper. (American Men 

of Letters.) Boston, 1882. 
Maigron, Louis. Le Roman Historique a I'fipoque Roman- 

tique : essai sur I'influence de Walter Scott. Paris, 

1898. 
Masson, David. British Novelists and Their Styles. Cam- 
bridge, Eng., 1859. 
Matthews, Brander. The Historical Novel, etc. New York, 

1901. 
Meteyard, Eliza. A Group of Englishmen (i795-i8i5),being 

records of the younger Wedgwoods and their friends. 

London, 1871. 
Millar, J. H. The Mid-Eighteenth Century. (Periods of 

European Literature.) New York, 1902. 
Moore, Thomas. Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with 

notices of his life. 2 vols. London, 1830. 
Myers, F. W. H. Wordsworth. (English Men of Letters.) 

New York, 1881. 
Newman, J. H. Apologia Pro Vita Sua. London, 1892. 
Nichol, John. Byron. (English Men of Letters.) New York, 

1880. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 177 

Palgrave, F. T. Biographical and Critical Memoir of Sir 
Walter Scott. (In Poetical Works of Scott. Lon- 
don, 1866, Macmillan and Company.) 
Paris, Gaston. La Litterature Frangaise au Moyen Age. 

Paris, 1890. 
Percy, W. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, consisting of 
old heroic ballads, songs, and other pieces of our 
earlier poets (chiefly of the lyric kind) together with 
some few of later date. 3 vols. London, 1765. 
Pierce, E. L. Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner. 2 

vols. Boston, 1877. 
Ruskin, John. Modern Painters. New edition, 5 vols. Lon- 
don, 1897. 
Saintsbury, George. Life of Scott. (Famous Scots Series.) 
New York. [1897.] 
A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe. 
... 3 vols. New York, 1900-1904. 
Scott, Temple, ed. The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. 

(Bohn's Standard Library.) London, 1 898-1 905. 
Southey, Robert. Selections from the Letters of Robert 
Southey, edited by John Wood Warter. 4 vols. 
London, 1856. 
Stephen, Leslie. English Literature and Society in the Eight- 
eenth Century. (Ford Lectures, 1903.) London, 
1904. 
Swift. (English Men of Letters.) New York, 1882. 
Taine, H. A. Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise. 4 vols. 

Paris, 1863-64. 
Ticknor, George. Life, Letters, and Journals of George Tick- 

nor. Sixth edition. 2 vols. Boston, 1877. 
White, A. D. Autobiography. 3 vols. New York, 1905. 
Wylie, L. J. Studies in the Evolution of English Criticism. 
Boston, 1894. 

3. Periodicals and articles referred to, aside from the articles 
written by Scott. 

The Bibliographer: Notes for a Bibliography of Swift, by 
Stanley Lane-Poole. Vol. VI, pp. 160-71. 
12 



178 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 

The Edinburgh Review: Review of The Minstrelsy of the 
Scottish Border, Vol. I, pp. 395-406; Review of Sir 
Tristrem, Vol. IV, pp. 427-43 ; Review of Scott's 
edition of Swift, Vol. XXVII, pp. 1-58 ; Border Bal- 
lads, Vol. CCIII, pp. 306-26. 

The English Historical Revienf. Dean Swift and The Memoirs 
of Captain Carleton, by Col. the Hon. Arthur Parnell, 
R.E. Vol. VI, pp. 97-151. 

Eraser's Magazine: Review of Letters on Demonology and 
Witchcraft, Vol, II, pp. 507-519. 

The Knickerbocker Magazine: Review by J. Fenimore Cooper 
of Lockhart's Life of Scott, Vol. XII, pp. 349 ff. 

Macmillan's Magazine: The Historical Novel: Scott and 
Dumas, by Prof. Saintsbury, Vol. LXX, pp. 321-330. 

The Nineteenth Century: Defoe's " Apparition of Mrs. Veal," 
by G. A. Aitken, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 95 ff. 

The Quarterly Review: Review of Dunlop's History of Fic- 
tion, Vol. XIII, pp. 384-408; Review of Franken- 
stein, Vol. XVIII, pp. 37-385 ; Review of The Lives 
of the Novelists, Vol. XXXIV, pp. 349-378. 



INDEX. 



Abbot, The, 88, 132, 155 
Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, 

15, 176 
Abbotsford, described by the Hon. 
Mary Monica Maxwell Scott, 161 
Abbotsford Notanda, 169 
Absalom and Achitophel, 60, 63- 

4, 66 
Account of the Death of Frederick, 

Duke of York, An, 156 
Addison, Joseph, 80 
Adolphus, J. L., see Letters to 

Heber 
Aeschylus, 50 
Age of Wordsworth, The, 10, 20, 

125, 131, 136, 175 
Aiken's Collection of Songs, Scott's 

review of, 26, 163 
Aitken, G. A., 77, 174^ 178 
Alastor, 89 

Alexander's Feast, 63, 139 
Allibone, S. A., 56, 153, 172, 174 
Amadis de Gaul, Scott's review of, 

4, 37, 128, 129, 162 
Ancient British Drama, 52, 15 1-2 
Ancient Criminal Trials, Scott's re- 
view of, 46, 143, 165 
Ancient English Metrical Romances, 

Scott's review of, 125, 162 
Ancient Mariner, The, 87-8 
Ancient Times, 149 
Anderson, J. P., see Bibliography of 

Scott 
Annals of a Publishing House, 169 
Annals of the Caledonians, etc., 

Scott's review of, 164 
Anne of Geierstein, 51, 65, 104, 

127, 160 
Antiquary, The, 3, 50, 51, 89, 154, 

172 
Apologia, Newman's, 142, 176 
Apology for Tales of Terror, 147 



Apparition of Mrs. Veal, The, 76- 
7, 178 

Arbuthnot, John, 68 

Ariosto, 33, 105 

Aristotle, 53, 54 

Arnold, Matthew, 95-6, 174 

Auchindrane, or The Ayrshire Trag- 
edy, 160 

Auchinleck Manuscript, The, 34, 148 

Aiild Robin Gray, 157 

Austen, Jane, 75, 100, 130 

Autobiography of Scott, 160 

Bage, Robert, 72, 75, 79 

Baillie, Joanna, 46, 85, 97, 98, 114, 

118, 151, 156 
Ballad Book, The, 28, 148 
Ballads and Lyrical Pieces, 148 
Ballantyne and Lockhart Pamphlets, 

The, 149, 169 
Bannatyne, Memoir of, 44, i6o 
Bannatyne Miscellany, The, 159 
Barnard, Lady Anne, 157 
Bartholomew Fair, 118 
Battle of Brunanburgh, The, 20, 43 
Battles of Talavera, Scott's review 

of, 106, 112-13, 163 
Beaumont and Fletcher, 42, 50, 51, 

52, s6 
Beggar's Bush, The, 50 
Beggar's Opera, The, 50 
Beowulf, 42 

Berners, John, Lord, 128 
Betrothed, The, 157, 167 
Bibliographer, The, 67, 177 
Bibliography of Scott, Anderson's, 

174 
Bibliotheque Bleue, 22 
Bibliotheque de Romans, 33 
Black Dwarf, The, 3, 87, 109, 154 
Blackmore, Sir Richard, 80 
Blackzi'ood's Edinburgh Magazine, 
78, 83, 100, 164, 167, 169 



179 



180 



INDEX 



Blair, Hugh, 15 

Boaden's Life of Kemble, Scott's 

review of, 46, 47, 58, 164 
Boiardo, 33 
Boileau, 136 
Border Antiquities, 153 
Boswell, James, 80, 161 
Brennoralt, 51 

Bridal of Triermain, The, 2y, 152 
Bride of Lammermoor, The, 3, 34, 

15s 
British Novelists and Their Styles, 

3, 145, 176 
Brome, Richard, 50 
Broughton, Hugh, 71 
Brown, Charles Brockden, 104 
Buchan, Peter, 27 
Bunyan, Scott's review of Southey's 

Life of. III, 165 
Biirger, Gottfried, 18, 31, 147 
Burney, Fanny, 100 
Burns, Robert, 22, 30, 86, 93, 96 
Burt's Letters from the North of 

Scotland, 154 
Butler, Samuel, 64 
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 11, 

SO, 86, 88-9, 91, 92-6, 97, 98, 99, 

loi, 104, 105, 106, no, 121, 129, 

143, 163, 171, 176 

Cadyow Castle, 30 

Cain, 95 

Caledonian Sketches, Scott's review 

of, 84, 163 
Calprenede, 53, y6 
Campbell, Thomas, 96, no, 118,163 
Carey, Patrick, 155 
Carey, Robert, Memoirs of, 149, 151 
Carleton, Captain, Memoirs of, 68, 

144, 148, 178 

Carlyle, Thomas, 125, 131, 144, 174 
Carr, Sir John, 84, 163 
Cartwright, William, 50 
Castle Dangerous, 18, 34, 161 
Castle of Otranto, The, 76 
Catalogue of the Centenary Exhi- 
bition, 147, 151, 171, 174 
Chambers, E. K., 21, 174 
Chambers, Robert, 50, 169, 170 
Changeling, The, 56 



Chapman, George, 50 

Chase, The, 31, 147 

Chatterton, Scott's review of the 
Life and Works of, 43, 162 

Chaucer, 43, 44-S, 62^ 162 

Chesterton, G. K., 11, 174 

Childe Harold, 14, 88, 93, 94, 95, 
129, 163 

Child, Francis J., 24, 28, 31, 174 

Chimney-Sweeper's Friend, 173 

Chivalry, Essay on, 36, 46, 154 

Christabel, 62, 86-7, 88 

Christie, W. D., 60 

Chronicles of the Canongate, 2, 3, 
80, 119, 129, 159 

Chronological Notes of Scottish Af- 
fairs, 156 

Chrononhotonthologos, 50 

Cid, The, Scott's review of, 92, 163 

Clarissa Harlowe, 74 

Clemens, Samuel L., 142, 174 

Clifford, Arthur, 149 

Cock and the Fox, The, 45 

Cockburn, Henry, 15, 175 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 11, 22, 
51, 86-9, 90-91, 92, 106, 13s, 137, 
138, 169, 17s 

Collins, Churton, 68, 143-4, 175 

Colvin, Sidney, 100 

Congreve, William, 57, 60 

Conquest of Granada, The, 57 

Constable, Archibald, Literary Cor- 
respondence of, 12, 33, 48, 52, 
98, 104, 121, 126, 127, 154, 158, 
168, 169 

Conybeare, John J., 42 

Cooper, J. Fenimore, 14, 101-3, 172, 
178 

Correspondence of Lady Suffolk, 
Scott's review of, 142, 164 

Count Julian, 99 

Count Robert of Paris, 161 

Courser's Manual, The, 173 

Courthope, W. J., 21, 141, 175 

Cowley, Abraham, 59, 64 

Cowper, William, 64 

Crabbe, George, 97, 166 

Craik, Sir Henry, 68 

Critic, The, 50 

Croker, J. W., 161, 163 



INDEX 



181 



Cromek's Reliques of Burns, Scott's 
review of, 22, 86, 163 

Culloden Papers, Scott's review of, 
45, 163 

Cumberland, Richard, jz, 163 

Cunningham, Allan, 47-8, 81-2, 96, 
175 

Curse of Kehama, The, Scott's re- 
view of, 91, 92, 163 

Dante, 33, 92 

Darkness, 88-9 

Davy, Sir Humphrey, see Sahnonia 

Dean Swift and the Memoirs of 
Captain Carleton, 68, 144, 148, 178 

Defoe, Daniel, 71, 72> 7(>-7, 148-9, 
156, 178 

Dekker, Thomas, 50, 56 

Demonology and Witchcraft, Let- 
ters on, 45, 104, 138, 160, 178 

De Quincey, Thomas, 99 

Derrick, John, 71, 150 

Description of the Regalia of Scot- 
land, 155 

Diable Boiteux, Le, 74 

Dictionary of British and American 
Authors, 56, 153, 172, 174 

D'Israeli, Isaac, 20, 142 

Domestic Manners and Private Life 
of Sir Walter Scott, 114, 175 

Don Juan, 95 

Donne, John, 62 

Don Quixote, 33 

Doom of Devorgoil, The, 46-7, 48, 
160 

Douce, Francis, 20 

Douglas, 47, SI, III 

Douglas, David, 161, 168 

Douglas on Military Bridges, Scott's 
review of, 163 

Dowden, Prof. Edward, 91, 175 

Drama, Essay on, 50, 52-9, 136, 154 

Drapier's Letters, The, 69 

Drayton, Michael, 62 

Drelincourt's Defence, etc., 76-7 

Dryden, John, 44, 59-65, 93, 112, 145 

Dryden's Works, edited by Scott, 
2, 5, 7, 36, 44-5, 50, 51, 52-8, 
59-65, 66, 70, 73, 80, 126, 131, 
136, 139, 145, 149 



Dunbar, William, 44, 143-4 
Dunlop, J. C, 72> 178 
Dyce, Alexander, 55 

Eberty, Felix, 2 

Edgeworth, Maria, 75, y6, 97, 100, 
loi, 103, 173 

Edinburgh Annual Register, The, 6, 
26, 85, 91, 118, 141, 15s, 165-7 

Edinburgh Review, 4, 5, 18, 25, 26, 
29, 31, 35, 36, 38, 40, 43, 44, 46, 
61, 69, 82, 84, 91, 125, 128, 129, 
134, 135, 162, 164, 178 

Edinburgh Weekly Journal, The, 
155, 156, 157, 167 

Elliott, Hon. Fitzwilliam, 25 

Ellis, George, 4, 20, 34, 35, 43, 44, 
58, 60, 91, 113, 162 

Ellis, James, Letters of Scott to, 171 

Emma, Scott's review of, 100, 163 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 37, 46, 
52, 154 

English and Scottish Popular Bal- 
lads, 24, 28, 31, 174 

English Historical Review, The, 68, 
144, 148, 178 

English Literature and Society in 
the Eighteenth Century, 97, 177 

English Minstrelsy, 151 

Ephemera Critica, 143-4, 175 

Evans's Old Ballads, Scott's re- 
view of, 26, 163 

Eve of St. John, The, 30, 147 

Evergreen, The, 28 

Eyrbyggja Saga, The, 42, 152 

Fables, Dryden's, 44-5, 64 

Fair Maid of Perth, The, 159 

Fair Maid of the Inn, The, 50 

Family Legend, The, 46 

Familiar Letters of Sir Walter 
Scott, 5, 13, 14, zz, 2,7, 40, 47, 
50, 62, 80, 84, 8s, 87, 89, 96, 97, 
103, 104, 108, no, 114, IIS, 116, 
118, 120, 138, 143, 168 

Fatal Revenge, The, Scott's review 
of, 163 

Faust, 104 

Faustus, 55 

Ferdinand, Count Fathom, 74 



182 



INDEX 



Fergusson, Robert, 86 

Ferrex and Porrex, 54 

Ferrier, Susan, 100 

Fielding, Henry, 73, 74, 75-6, 78- 

9, no 
Field of Waterloo, The, 121, 153 
Fitzgerald, Percy, 49, 175 
Fleetzvood, Scott's review of, 162 
Fletcher, John, 42, 50, 51, 52, 56 
Fletcher, Phineas, 64 
Ford, John, 50, 56 
Foreign Quarterly Review, 57, 58, 

105, 132, 133, 164 
Forester's Guide, The, Scott's re- 
view of, 164 
Forster, John, 85, 91, 98-9, 175 
Fortunes of Nigel, The, 27, 47, 48, 

49, SI, 77, 108, no. III, 118, 119, 

128, 131, 157 
Fouque, Baron de la Motte, 105 
Fragnienta Regalia, 55, 149 
Fragments of Voyages and Travel, 

172 
France, Anatole, 127 
Franck, Richard, 155 
Frankenstein, 78, 89, 164, 178 
Fraser's Magazine, 85, 106, 130, 138, 

143, 146, I7S, 178 
Freeman, Edward, 126, 127, 175 
Frere, John Hookham, 20, 35 
Froissart, 36, 128, 162 

Gait, John, 129, 164 

Gammer Gurton's Needle, 54 

Gates, Prof. L. E., 134, 135, 175 

Gay, John, 128 

Gebir, 98 

Gertrude of Wyoming, Scott's re- 
view of, 82, 96, 163 

Gibson, John, 170 

Gifford, William, 50, 52, 83, 84, 134, 
141 

Gilfillan, George, i 

Gillies, R. P., 14, 85, 95, 106, 130, 
143, 146, 171, 175 

Gleniinlas, 30 

Godwin, William, 9, 44, 99 

Godwin's Life of Chaucer, Scott's 
review of, 9, 44, 84, 124, 162 



Goethe, 54, 95, 104-5, 125, 147 
Goetz von Berlichingen, 54, 147 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 72, 75 
Gosson, Stephen, 71 
Gourgaud's Narrative, Remarks on, 

164 
Grammont, Count, 5, 152 
Gray Brother, The, 30 
Greene, Robert, 55, 71 
Grimm, Jacob, 21 
Groat' s-worth of Wit, 71 
Group of Englishmen, A, 87, 176 
Gulliver's Travels, 70 
Guy Mannering, 3, 6, 46, 50, 76, 

117, 120, 121, 153, 167 
Gwynne, John, Military Memoirs of, 

157 

Hajji Baba in England, Scott's re- 
view of, 164 

Halidon Hill, 48, 156 

Hall of Justice, The, 97 

Harold the Dauntless, 121, 154 

Harper's Magazine, 161 

Hawkesworth, John, 65 

Haydon, B. R., 99, 171 

Hazlitt, William, 49, 51, 85, 99, 114, 
135, 139, 141, 175 

Heart of Midlothian, The, 3,46, 154 

Heher, Richard, Letters to, 10, 15- 
16, 49, 6s, 8s, 88, 97, 114, 129, 
131, 132, 174 

Hemans, Mrs. Felicia, 98 

Henderson's edition of The Min- 
strelsy of the Scottish Border, 22, 
23, 24-s, 26, 28, 29, 148 

Henry, Robert, 126 

Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 150 

Herbert, William, Scott's review of 
the Poems of, 18, 31, 41, 162 

Herford, C. H., see Age of Words- 
worth 

Highland Widozv, The, 120, iS9 

Hind and the Panther, The, 60 

History of Criticism, Saintsbury's, 
146, 177 

History of English Poetry, Court- 
hope's, 21, 175 

History of English Poetry, War- 
ton's, 19, 21, 34, 35 



INDEX 



183 



History of John Bull, 68 

History of Prose Fiction, Dunlop's, 
73, 178 

History of Queen Elizabeth's Fa- 
vourites, 5, 149 

History of Scotland, Scott's, 127, 
160 

History of Scotland, Tytler's, Scott's 
review of, 45, 124, 164 

History of the Church of Scotland, 
Defoe's, 77 

History of the Church of Scotland, 
Sharpe's Kirkton's, Scott's re- 
view of, 163 

History of the Norman Conquest of 
England, 126, 127, 175 

History of the Years 1814 and 1815, 
6, 166 

Hodgson, Captain, Memoirs of, 148, 
149 

Hoffman, Scott's review of the 
Works of, 89, 105, 132, 164 

Hogg, James, 26, 96, 114, 169, 171, 

175 
Home, Scott's review of the Life 

of, 15, 80, 82, 106, 164 
Homer, 63, 71, 118, 131 
Horace, 54, 84 
Hours of Idleness, 93 
House of Aspen, The, 167 
Hudibras, 64 
Hudson, W. H., 2, 175 
Hughes, Mrs., 54, 168 
Hume, David, 15 

Hunt, Leigh, 99, 100, 135, 141, 176 
Hutton, R. H., I, 176 
Hutchinson, H. G., 54, 168 

Iliad, The, 63, 131 

Illustrations of Northern Antiqui- 
ties, 152 

Image of Ireland, The, 71, 150 

Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, 
Essay on, 19, 30, 41, 42, 88, 115, 
160 

Indian Emperor, The, 53 

Introductions, etc., to the Novels, 
Tales, and Romances, of the Au- 
thor of Waverley, 160 



Irving, Washington, 15, 97, loi, 
103-4, 117, 143, 171, 176 

Ivanhoe, 6, 87, 108, 120, 126, 127, 
128, 142, 15s 

Jacobite Relics, 26, 175 

Jamieson, Robert, 42, 152, 154 

Jeffrey, Francis, 4, 69, 83, 84, 93, 
134-5 

Jests of George Peele, yi 

Jonathan Wild, 74 

John de Lancaster, Scott's review 
of, 163 

Johnes's Froissart, Scott's review of, 
36, 162 

Johnson, Samuel, 60, 61, 64, 68, 73, 
74, 79-80, 102, 128, 135, 137, 161 

Johnstone, Charles, 73 

Jolly Beggars, The, 86 

Jonson, Ben, 50, 51, 56, 118 

Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 
161 

Journal, Scott's, 12, 38, 51, 56, 84, 
100, 117, 122, 129, 161, 164 (see 
the footnotes for the many refer- 
ences not here indexed) 

Judicial Reform, Essay on, 141, 165 

Keats, John, 11, 100 

Keepsake, The, 167 

Kelly's Reminiscences, Scott's re- 
view of, 46, 47, 58, 164 

Kemble, Scott's review of the Life 
of, 46, 47, 58, 164 

Kemble, J. M., 43 

Kenilworth, 10, 51, 98, 155 

Kinmont Willie, 24, 26, 31, 148 

Kirk, Robert, 45, 153 

Kirkton's History, etc., Scott's re- 
view of, 163 

Knickerbocker's History of New 
York, 103 

Knickerbocker Magazine, The, 102, 
172, 178 

Knight, Prof. William, see Memo- 
rials of Coleorton, and Words- 
zvorth 

Knight's Tale, The, 44 

Knighton, Sir William, Memoirs of, 
12, 171 

Kolbing, E., 35, 2(> 



184 



INDEX 



Kuzsilbash, The, Scott's review of, 
164 

Lady of the Lake, The, 46, 97, 113, 

118, 119, 151 
Lady Suffolk's Correspondence, 

Scott's review of, 142, 164 
Laird's Jock, The, 167 
Laing, Malcolm, 40, 176 
Lamb, Charles, 20, 51, 99, 100, 135 
Landor, Forster's Life of, 85, 91, 

98-9, 175 
Landscape Gardening, see Planter's 

Guide 
Lane-Poole, Stanley, 67, 177 
Lang, Andrew, Border Edition of 
the Waverley Novels, 51, 89, 
108, 158, 176 
Life of Lockhart, 52, 84, 99, 

100, 158, 168 
Life of Scott, 87, 100, 126, 

127, 176 
Secret Commonwealth of Elves, 
Fauns, and Fairies, 153 
Langhorne, John, 98 
Lay of the Last Minstrel, The, 4, 

18, 31, 87, no, 148 
Lays of the Lindsays, 157 
Lee, Sidney, 150 
Lee, William, 77 
Legare, H. S., 94, 176 
Legend of Montrose, A, 51, 155 
Lennox, Charlotte, 151 
Lenore, 31, 147 
Le Sage, 73, 74 
Letter from Dr. Tripe to Nestor 

Ironside, 67 
Letters of Malachi Malagrowther on 

the Currency, 59, 69, 116, 140, 157 
Letters of Sir Walter Scott, 168- 

173, see also Familiar Letters, 

Hutchinson, Polwhele, and Stuart, 

Lady Louisa 
Letters on Demonology and Witch- 
craft, 45, 104, 160, 178 
Letters to Richard Heber, etc., 10, 

15-16, 49, 65, 85, 88, 97, 114, 129, 

131, 132, 174 
Letting of Humour's Blood in the 

Head Vaine, The, 153 



Levett, Robert, Verses on the Death 
of, 80 

Lewis, Matthew, 30, 97-8, 147 

Leyden, John, 25, 30, 166 

Liberal Movement in English Lit- 
erature, The, 141, 175 

Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, The, 
7, 12, 78, 102, 124-5, 127, 140, 
158, 170 

Life on the Mississippi, 142, 174 

Life of Sir Walter Scott, The, see 
Cunningham, Gilfillan, Hudson, 
Hutton, Lang, Lockhart, Mac- 
kenzie, and Saintsbury 

Litterature Frangaise au Moyen 
Age, La, 38, 177 

Little French Lawyer, The, 50 

Lives of the Novelists, 6, 7, 15, 72- 
9, 128, 131, 156, 178 

Lives of the Poets, 74 

Living Poets of Great Britain, Ar- 
ticle on, 118, 165 

Livre de Mon Ami, Le, 127, 175 

Lockhart, John Gibson, 6, 22, 25, 
27, 29, 52, 83, 84, 85, 98, 99, 112, 
117, 158, 160, 168, 169 

Lockhart' s Life of Scott, i, 11, 12, 
i3> 96, 98, loi, 102-3, 112, 148, 
149, 152, 153, 161, 162, 163, 164, 
165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172, 173, 
174, 178 (see the footnotes for 
the many references not here in- 
dexed) 

Lodge, Edmund, 132, 172 

London, 79 

Lord Byron and Some of his Con- 
temporaries, 99-100, 176 

Lord of the Isles, The, 120, 153 

Lounsbury, Prof. T. R., 14, 102, 176 

Love, 87 

Lyly, John, 61 

Macaulay, T. B., 144 
Macduff's Cross, 156 
Mackenzie, Colin, 30 
Mackenzie, Henry, 17, 73, 75, 100, 

see also Home, John 
Mackenzie, R. Shelton, i, 52, 123, 

139, 171 
Macmillan's Magazine, 51, 142, 178 



INDEX 



185 



McNeill, G. P., 35 

Macpherson, James, 40, 41, 176 

Madoc, 91 

Magnalia, 104 

Maigron, Louis, 105, 176 

Malachi Malagrowther, Letters of, 

59, 69, 116, 140, 157 
Malone, Edmund, 60, 61 
Malory, 37 
Manfred, 50, 51 
Mark Twain, 142, 174 
Marlowe, Christopher, 55 
Marmion, 5, 6, 31, 90, 93, 97, 110, 

113, IIS, 14s, 148 
Marston, John, 50 
Masque of Owls, The, 51 
Massinger, Philip, 56 
Masson, David, 3, 145^ 176 
Mather, Cotton, 104 
Matthews, Prof. Brander, 76, 176 
Maturin, C. R., 138, 163, 164 
Mediaeval Stage, The, 21, 174 
Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, 14, 

171 
Memoirs of Captain Carleton, 68, 

144, 148-9, 178 
Memoirs of Captain Hodgson, 148, 

149 
Memoirs of Robert Carey, 149, 151 
Memoirs of the Court of Charles 

II; S, 152 

Memoirs of the Insurrection in 

17 1 5, 1 59 
Memoirs of the Duke of Sully, 151 
Memoirs of the Marchioness de la 

Rochejaquelin, 159 
Memoirs of the Reign of King 

Charles L, 5, 152 
Memorials of Coleorton, 169 
Memorials of George Bannatyne, 

44, 160 
Memorials of His Time, Cockburn's, 

IS, 17s 

Memorials of James Hogg, lyi 
Memorials of the Haliburtons, 155 
Memorie of the Somervilles, 154 
Merry Devil of Edmonton, The, 50 
Meteyard, Eliza, 87, 176 
Mezeray's History of France, 80 
Mickle, W. J., 98 



Middleton, Thomas, 50, 56 
Mid-Eighteenth Century, The 74, 

176 
Millar, J. H., 74, 176 
Military Bridges, Scott's review of, 

163 
Military Memoirs of the Great Civil 

War, 5, 157 
Milton, 40, 62, 6s, 88, 91, 92, 95, 

104, 143 
Minot, Laurence, 43 
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 
3, 4, 7, 17-32, 33, 36, 45, 80, 147- 
8, 160, 178 
Mirror for Magistrates, The, 55 
Miscellaneous Prose Works, Scott's, 
7, 26, 73, 149, 151, 154^ 156, 159, 
160, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167 
Miseries of Human Life, Scott's re- 
view of, 162 
Modern British Drama, The, 52, 152 
Modern Painters, 10, 129, 177 
MoHere, 53, 57, 58, 133, 164 
Monastery, The, 88, 105, 116, 155 
Monk, The, 98 

Moore, Thomas, 96, 97, 166, 176 
Murray, John, Memoir and Corre- 
spondence of, 83, 84, 93, los, 141, 
142, 163, 168, 169 
My Aunt Margaret's Mirror, 131, 

167 
Myers, F. W. H., 130, 176 
Mysterious Mother, The, 50 

Napoleon, Scott's Life of, 7, 12, 78, 
102, 124-S, 127, 140, 158, 170 

Nash, Thomas, 59 

Naunton, Sir Robert, 149 

Neidpath Castle, Wordsworth's son- 
net on, 87 

New History of the English Stage, 
49, 175 

Newman, J. H., 142, 176 

New Practice of Cookery, The, 
Scott's review of, 162 

New Test of the Church of Eng- 
land's Loyalty, A, 71 

Nichol, John, 95, 176 

Nichols, John, 65 



186 



INDEX 



Nineteenth Century, The, tj, 172, 

178 
Norman Conquest of England, The, 

126, 127, 175 
Northern Antiquities, 42, 152 
Northern Memoirs, 155 
Notices concerning the Scottish 

Gypsies, 1 67 
Novelists' Library, The, 6, 7, 72-79, 

156 

Ode on Scottish Music, 30 

Oedipe, 53 

Old Mortality, 2^, 62, 77, 89, 109, 

128, 154 
Oliphant, Mrs., 169 
Omen, The, Scott's review of, 164 
Opus Magnum, The, 7, 108, 160 
Original Memoirs Written during 

the Great Civil War, 4, 148 
Ossian, 40-41, 162, 176 
Otway, Thomas, 50, 57, 58 

Paradise Lost, 95 
Palamon and Arcite, 64 
Palgrave, Francis, 13, 40, 177 
Papers relative to the Regalia of 

Scotland, 160 
Paris, Gaston, 38, 177 
Parnell, Col., the Hon. Arthur, 68, 

144, 148, 178 
Parnell, Thomas, 80 
Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, 6, 

88, 125, 140, 154 
Peele, George, 55 
Penni Worth of Wit, A, 148 
Pepys, Samuel, 65, 142, 164 
Percy, Thomas, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 

26, 28, 32, 34, 37, 38, 177 
Periodical Criticism, Article on, 165 
Petrarch, ^3 

Peveril of the Peak, 44, 105, 157 
Pierce, E. L., 177 
Pilot, The, loi 
Pioneers, The, 14 
Pinner of Wakefield, The, 59 
Pirate, The, 3, 117, 125-6, 155 
Pitcairn's Ancient Criminal Trials, 

Scott's review of, 46, 143, 165 



Planter's Guide, The, Scott's re- 
view of, 164 

Planting Waste Lands, Scott's re- 
view of, 164 

Plays on the Passions, 50 

Poe, Edgar Allan, 109, no 

Poems, with Prefaces by the Au- 
thor, 160 

Polwhele, R., Letters of Scott to, 
132, 148, 170 

Poor Richard's Almanac, 104 

Pope, Alexander, 79, 81, 93, 97, 
106, 113 

Popular Poetry, Remarks on, 19, 22, 
30, 34, 160 

Portraits of Illustrious Personages, 
132, 172 

Prairie, The, loi 

Prior, Matthew, 80 

Proceedings in the Court-martial, 
etc., 159 

Provincial Antiquities, 6, 56, 59, 155 

Pulci, 33 

Quarterly Review, 2, 5-6, 20, 22, 
26, 45, 46, 55, 73. 77, 78, 82, 83, 
84, 94, 96, 99, 100, 109, 112, 113, 
114, 124, 129, 140, 143, 163, 164, 
165, 168, 178 
Queenhoo Hall, 5, 128, 149 
Quentin Durward, 88, 104, 122, 127, 
157 

Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 73, 75, 76, 131 

Rambler, The, 80, 156 

Ramsay, Allan, 28, 86 

Recollections of Sir Walter Scott, 
R. P. Gillies', 106, 130, 143, 146, 
175 

Redgauntlet, 3, 89, 157 

Red Rover, The, loi 

Reeve, Clara, 73, 76, 78 

Religio Laid, 64 

Religious Discourses by a Layman, 
159 

Reliquiae Trottosienses, 161 

Reliques of Burns, Scott's review 
of, 22, 86, 163 

Remarks on Gen. Gourgaud's Nar- 
rative, 164 



INDEX 



187 



Remarks on Popular Poetry, 19, 22, 

30, 34, 160 
Remarks on the Death of Lord 

Byron, 93, 95 
Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott, 

John Gibson's, 170 
Revolutions of Naples, Article on, 

164 
Richardson, Samuel, 72, 74-5, 77, 78 
Ritson, Joseph, 19, 20, 21, 23, 32, 

34, 37, 38, 39, 45, 162, 164 
Robert of Brunne, 34 
Robertson, William, 15 
Robinson, Crabbe, 87 
Rob Roy, 3, 76, 154 
Rogers, Samuel, 151 
Rokeby, 108, iii, 115, 116, 152 
Romance, Essay on, 34, 37, 38-9, 

42, 46, 146, 154 
Roman Historique a I'&poque Ro- 

mantique, Le, 105, 176 
Roscommon, Earl of, 136 
Rose, W. S., Z7, 92, 162 
Rowlands, Samuel, 153 
Rowley, 43, 50 
Ruskin, John, 10, 129, 172, 177 

Sackville, Thomas, 54-5 

Sadler, Sir Ralph, State Papers 

and Letters of, 149 
Saint Ronan's Well, 51, 64, 88, 100, 

108, 157 
Saintsbury, Prof. George, 2, 51, 53, 

57, 60, 61, 63, 142, 146, 177, 178 
Sale-Room, The, 166, 167 
Sahnonia, Scott's review of, 164 
Schlegel, 53 

School of Abuse, The, 71 

Scott, Temple, 67, 177 

Scuderi, 53, 76 

Secret Commonwealth, The, 45, 153 

Secret History of One Year, The, 

71 
Secret History of the Court of 

James L, 5, 55, 152 
Severn, Joseph, 100 
Seward, Anne, 30, 85, 89, 91, 151 
Shadwell, Thomas, 51, 57 
Shakspere, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55-6, 57, 

58, 59, 62, 65, 86, 95, 97, 157-8 



Sharpe, C. K., 27, 28, 30, 31, 66, 

81, 97, 114, 118, 148, 163, 169 
Shelley, Mrs. Mary, 78, 163 
Shelley, P. B., 11, 89, 91, 106, 175 
Sheridan, Thomas, 65 

Shirley, James, 50, 56 

Short Account of Successful Ex- 
ertions, etc., 173 

Sibbald's Chronicle, Scott's review 
of, 46, 162 

Sir Eustace Grey, 97 

Sir John Oldcastle, 59 

Sir Tristrem, 4, 34-6, 39, 42, 43, 56, 
148, 178 

Sketch Book, The, 104 

Sketch of Lord Kinneder, 157 

Slingsby, Sir H., Life of, 148 

Smith, Adam, 15 

Smith, Charlotte, 73 

Smollett, Tobias, 73, 74, 156 

Somers Tracts, The^ 4, 6, 60, 63, 
70-72, 126, 150 

Somerville, Lord, 154 

Southerne, Thomas, 50 

Southey, Robert, 4, 20, 37, 46, 49, 

82, 87, 89, 90, 91-2, 93, 96, 98, 
99, 106, no, III, 118, 124, 143, 
151, 162, 163, 165, 169, 170, 177 

Spae-Wife, The, 129 
Specimens of Early English Ro- 
mances, Scott's review of, 125, 162 
Specimens of English Dramatic 

Poets, 20, 51, 99 
Specimens of the Early English 
Poets, Scott's review of, 43, 44, 
162 
Spenser, 33, 62, 64 
Stael, Mme. de, 140 
Stanhope, Philip, Earl, 144 
Steele, Sir Richard, 67, 120 
Stephen, Sir Leslie, 65, 68, 97, 177 
Sterne, Laurence, 73, 75, 103, 156 
Story of Rimini, The, 99 
Strutt, Joseph, 5, 126, 149 
Stuart, Lady Louisa, Letters of, 10, 

83, 127, 128, 169 

Studies in the Evolution of English 

Criticism, 137, 177 
Suckling, Sir John, 51, 59 



188 



INDEX 



Sumner, Charles, Memoirs and Let- 
ters of, 102, 177 

Supernatural in Fictitious Composi- 
tion, The, 164 

Surgeon's Daughter, The, 159 

Surtees, Robert, 20, 27, 30, 161 

Swift, Deane, 65 

Swift, Jonathan, 65-70, 103, 148-9, 
177 

Swift's Works, edited by Scott, 6, 
7, 65-70, 73, 79, ^26, 139, 153, 178 

Taine, H. A., 125, 177 

Tales of a Grandfather, 7, 123, 127, 

141, 159, 160 
Tales of My Landlord, 77, 109, iii- 

12, 128, 132, 154, iss, 161, 163, 

167 
Tales of the Crusaders, 98, 124, 157 
Talisman, The, 157 
Tapestried Chamber, The, 85, 167 
Taylor, William, 31, 170 
Tender Husband, The, 120 
Terry, Daniel, 46, 49 
Thackeray, W. M., 80, 123 
Thalaba, 91, 135 
Thomas the Rhymer, 29, 30, 34-6, 

148 
Thorkelin, 42 
Thornton's Sporting Tour, Scott's 

review of, 162 
Three Studies in Literature, 134, 

13s, 175 
Ticknor, George, 15, 56, 103, 144, 

153, -^77 
Tieck, 10 
Tierry, 127 
Todd's Spenser, Scott's review of, 

61, 62, 84 
Tom Jones, 75 
Traditions and Recollections, etc., 

170 
Tressan, 33, 34 

Trial of Duncan Terig, The, 161, 
Tristram Shandy, 75, 156 
Trivial Poems and Triolets, 155 
Troilus and Criseyde, 45 



True-born Englishman, The, 71 
Trustworthiness of Border Ballads, 

The, 25, 178 
Turner, Sharon, 42, 126 
Two Bannatyne Garlands, 161 
Two Drovers, The, 159 
Ty tier's History of Scotland, Scott's 

review of, 45, 124, 164 
Varied Types, 11, 174 
Vanity of Human Wishes, The, 79 
Venis and Adonis, 58 
Vicar of Wakefield, The, 75 
Virgin Queen, The, 51 
Visionary, The, 155 
Vision of Don Roderick, The, 152, 

1 6s 
Voltaire, 78, 105 

Waldron, Francis, 51 

Wallenstein, 51, 88 

Waller, Edmund, 64 

Walpole, Horace, 71, 72, 7^, 76, 

150, 163 
Walpole, Robert, 71 
Walton, Isaac, 64-5 
War Song of the Royal Edinburgh 

Light Dragoons, 30 
Warton, Joseph, 60 
Warton, Thomas, 19, 21, 34, 35 
Warter, J. W., 124, 177 
Warwick, Sir Philip, 152 
Waverley, 3, 6, 36, 85, 100, 120, 

122, 123, 125, 149, 153, 163 
Weber, Henry, 42, 52, 152 
Webster, John, 50, 55, 56 
White, Hon. Andrew, D., 127, 177 
William and Helen, 147 
Wilson, John, 50, 83 
Women, Scott's review of, 164 
Women Pleased, 50 
Woodstock, 44, 51, 141, 157, 170 
Wordsworth, William, 85, 87, 89- 

91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 106, 130, 143, 

169, 172, 176 
Wylie, L. J., 137, 177 

Yarrow Revisited, 90 



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SIR WALTER SCOTT 



AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE 



BY 



MARGARET BALL 



Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for 

THE Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty 

OF Philosophy, Columbia University 



NEW YORK 
1907 






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VITA 

The writer of this study was born in New Haven, Connec- 
ticut, on the ninth of April, 1878. After an elementary school 
education in Elgin. Illinois, a fragmentary course in the sec- 
ondary schools of Rutland, Vermont, and Anderson, Indiana, 
and a year of private study, she entered Mount Holyoke Col- 
lege and graduated with the class of 1900. Her study of Eng- 
lish composition and literature in college was principally di- 
rected by Professor Clara F. Stevens and Dr. Marguerite 
Sweet. Having spent one year as an assistant in English at 
Mount Holyoke, the writer entered Columbia University in 
November, 1902, and received the master's degree in 1903. 
She remained, in residence at the university until June. 1906, 
during two of these years acting as assistant in English at Bar- 
nard College. Her study of Anglo-Saxon and Chaucer in 
Columbia was directed by Dr. Krapp ; of other mediaeval litera- 
ture by Professor Neilson, Dr. Lawrence, and Professor 
Spingarn. Elizabethan and later English literature she 
studied chiefly under Professor Trent. Besides these courses 
she had some work in composition with Professor G. R. Car- 
penter and Professor Brewster, and in education with Pro- 
fessor F. T. Baker. In 1906 she became a member of the 
faculty of Mount Holyoke College. 



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